'959 


at  1  5  hnd 


O-i 


ALVMNVS  BOOK  FYHD 


By  John  Curtis  Underwood 

War  Flames. 

Processionals. 

The  Iron  Muse. 

Americans. 

Literature  and  Insurgency. 


Trail's  End 


By 


John  Curtis  Underwood 


Santa  Fe,  N.  M. 
1921 


New  Mexican  Publishing  Corporation 


Cofiyrieht  by 

John  Curtis  Undtrwood 

1921 


X 


To 
Two  Women 


O  i  ~ 


CONTENTS 

Foreword    -..- - 7 

Burros    - _ 9 

Flivvers _ _ 10 

The  Plaza  _...._ _ 12 

The  Old  Palace _ 14 

The  Frijoles  Room _ _ 16 

The  Alcove  , 18 

Palace  Undertaking  Parlors  _ 20 

The  Corner  Drug  Store 21 

Rosario's  _ 22 

San  'Miguel  _ _ 24 

The  Oldest  Church _25 

The  Hat  Shop  - ,. „ 26 

The  Tea  Room  27 

The  Bank  „ 28 

The  Garage  29 

The  Swimming  Pool 30 

The  Studio 31 

Casa  Pintada  32 

The  Old  Bells  - - 33 

The  Blind  Wood  Chopper _ „ 34 

Arturo _ 35 

The  Yellow  Kiva  - 36 

The  Paris  ~ 37 

Hotel  de  Olid 39 

The  Old  Adobe 40 

Penitentes    , - 41 

Santa  Fe  Forenoon 42 

The  Tower  43 

Still  Life 44 

Star  Spray  T 45 

Winter  Midnight _ 46 

Winter  Morning  r 47 

Winter  Noon - 48 

The  Ride  Home 50 

Rito  Del  Frijoles  51 

Corn  Dance,  San  Domingo , 53 

The  Heritage  - 55 

The  Trail  Mender  57' 

Goats    .-. -.58 

Coyote 59 

Processional  r 60 

The  Dimple 61 

The  Spring 62 

Lost  Lake  63' 

Tesuque  Church  , - 64 

Ten  Candles  65 

The   Cabin   66 

The  Santa  Fe  Trail 67 

The  Old  Dim  Trail 69 

The  Revenant  70 

Treasure  Seekers  -  72 

Puppets  and  People 73 

Pussy  Cats  and  Cherubim 74 

Sunset — New   Mexico  76 

High  School  Tennis  Court 78 

Envoy 79 


FOREWORD 


My  fathers  tracked  across  the  plains, 
Forebears  in  heart,  mayhap  in  blood, 
To  find  this  region  that  remains 
Raised  from  the  sea's  salt  flood. 

They  loarned  its  highlands  and  its  trails, 
Its  snow  peaks  and  arroyos  brown, 
Its  forests  green,  its  misty  veils 
Rolling  gray  mountains  down. 

They  knew  blue  skies  of  Paradise, 
Its  dry,  clear  air  whose  breath  is  life, 
Its  high  rock  bastioned  ruins  that  rise 
Hewed  by  a  giant's  knife; 

Its  gardens  and  its  orchard  trees, 
Along  the  trenched  acequia's  flow, 
Unfailing  as  its  sun  that  sees 
All  things  that  smile  and  grow; 

Where  long,  low,  brown  adobe  walls 
Leaning  along  the  foot  hills,  climb; 
Home  of  a  brown  skinned  race  that  calls 
With  the  slow  smile  of  time. 

This  old,  star-trailed  Franciscan  town 
Where  life  is  always  afternoon, 
Wrapped  in  its  ragged  robe  of  brown, 
My  fathers  found  one  June. 


BURROS 

We  met  four  burros  in  the  streets  of  Santa  Fe  one  steel  blue  morning, 
When   snow   on   the  mountains   crept   lower   down   trails   they   were 

treading. 
Two  were  gray,  and  two  were  brown  to  match  the  merchandise  they 

marched  with, 
Naked  cedar  split  and  frost  rimed   piled  on  gnarled   brown  pinyon 

wood, 
Bound  round  furry  backs  and  flanks  in  huge  wooden  horseshoes. 

And  the  gray  and  brown  small  brothers  of  St.  Francis  plodded  soberly, 
Turning  corners  of  the  long  and  crooked  trail  their  fathers  tracked 

from  Burgos  and  Assisi, 
Trampling  planks  of  tossing  ships  and  foam  swept  beaches  brown  as 

Mexico, 
Treading  where  the  padres  tramped,  on  trails  as  brown  as  tattered 

robes  that  fluttered  round  them. 

They  went  stacked  with  stuff  for  fire  that  flamed  far  northward  in 
strong  sunlight. 

The  padres'  skin  burned  brown  through  torrid  summers;  their  burros' 
hair  grew  long  and  thicker  through  bleak  winters. 

And  the  flame  that  fired  its  human  torches  in  Toledo,  and  leapt  across 
the  sea,  harrassed  them  still  and  swept  them  with  it. 

The  brown  padres  sweated  in  the  desert,  and  the  burros  walked  be 
side  them  bearing  food  and  wine  and  water. 

The  gray  padres  shivered  on  white  mesas  where  their  burros  carried 
firewood,  charcoal,  and  live  coals  in  battered  braziers. 

The  burros  carried  crosses  like  their  threadbare  masters  of  slow 
martyrdoms, 

Uprights  rough  and  cross  bars  crude,  men  rudely  joined  and  set  to 
gether  and  raised. 

By  bright  springs  and  turbid  rivers,  on  brown  rocks  and  mountains 
meeting  sunrise. 

They  bore  rude  wooden  symbols  of  a  life  that  parched  in  deserts 
burned  and  thirsted  with  a  yearning  infinite; 

Warmed  the  dead  to  life,  and  dying  lifted  high  a  torch  of  red  tradition 
that  each  padre's  burning  body  raised  from  dying  once  more. 

And  the  burros  beside  the  padres  such  as  bore  a  Babe  in  Egypt, 
brought  the  crosses  home  to  Santa  Fe; 

Saw  their  shadows  when  they  grew  from  earth;  and  lost  them  when 
men  raised  them  higher; 

Heard  the  bells  beside  them  chiming  through  three  centuries  of  rhym 
ing  gray  traditions. 

And  they  bore  the  little  children  of  those  dying  years  that  laughing 
beat  them  with  brown  billets  saved  from  crimson  fires. 

Still  they  bear  their  timber  horseshoes  of  good  luck  to  all  who  conquer 

cold  and  hunger,  with  slight  tools  of  light; 
Bearing  split  wood  for  sacrifice  to  faith  that  forms  its  crosses  where 

two  faggots  set  together  light  their  fire  on  earth's  bare  altar. 
They  bear  brown  laughing  children  where  the  brown  cathedral's  bells 

are  chiming,  rhyming  still  old  rituals; 
Stepping  soberly  and  slowly,  small  brown  brothers  of  St.  Francis, 

small  gray  guardians 
Of  the  splintered   keys  of  sight,   and   love  like  his,  like   light,   for 

sun  and  mountain,  star  and  shadow; 
Burden  bearers,  high  and  holiest,  like  the  lowliest  and  the  least,  bird 

or  beast.  Santa    F6  11        7        18 


10 


FLIVVERS 

They  come  and  stand  in  the  Plaza  and  drink  deep  there, 

While   their   riders   drink   deep   at  our   bubble   fountains   and   aoda 

fountains; 

Little  tin  tramps  of  the  world  with  bulging  side  pockets  and  canteens, 
And  bedding  rolled  and  shouldered  on  roofs  as  deep  in  dust, 
As  the  bleached  straw  suit  cases  strapped  behind  and  never  opened 
Prom  Lowell,  Moline  and  Mobile  to  Santa  Monica  and  San  Diego. 

Their  women  wear  clothes  like  their  men  as  often  as  not, 
Sweaters,  riding  breeches,  miners'  boots  and  faded  khaki  overalls, 
Hiding  all  from  head  to  foot  but  sun-browned  faces  and  sun-tanned 

fingers, 
Girls  that  have  soaked  in  the  sun  and  bathed  in  it  in  brown  and 

hidden  arroyos. 
Some  of  them  sit  in  the  Plaza  with  little  hand  mirrors  and  vanity 

cases  and  powder  their  faces. 

Some  pencil  letters  and  diaries,  and  some  take  time  to  stare 
At  gray  burros  and  brown  adobes  while  their  mothers  are  marketing, 
Big  brown  women  and  little  wiry  ones  with  bulging,  faded,  flowered 

knitting  bags. 

The  flivvers  stand  fast  or  sulk  to  garages  to  be  blacksmithed. 

Men  with  the  trail's  slow  traces  in  browning  faces, 

Of  freedom  from  shop  and  farm  and  office  desk  and  folio, 

Curb   them,   swing  them   away,   feed   them,   groom   them   and   bring 

them  back 
Where  the  women  and  children  are  waiting. 

Children  whose  eyes  grow  bright  from  miracles  overnight. 

Crowding  an  epic  into  three  months  or  four, 

Since  they  beat  through  spring  rain  and  sleet  and  mud  that  was 

bottomless, 
On  an  endless  old  Santa  F6  trail,  and  the  rest  like  the  streams  of  a 

water  shed; 
Till  the  high  plains  passed  one  night,  and  the  sun  pulled  out  of  the 

sky  line 

A  far,  faint  saw-toothed  coast  line  of  mountains  that  marched  together, 
Marched  and  mounted  in  monstrous  ranks  till  they  looked  like  a  wall 

at  the  end  of  the  world. 


11 


There  where  the  West  begins  they  filed  through  the  passes. 
And  the  women  walked  with  the  children  up  shortcuts  to  zigzags, 
To  the  wheel  tracks  on  the  summits;  and  they  stared  and  wondered 

and  went  on, 
Slowly  breathing  the  beauty  of  God's   vast  world   at   last  revealed 

to  them. 

They  moved  on  with  it  day  by  day,  and  grew  used  to  it, 
Rolling  closer  to  the  westering  sun,  and  camping  nearer  the  stars 

night  after  night, 
They  met  bleak  mesas  and  buttes,  they  forded  wide  rivers  of  sand 

that  sucked  at  the  wheels. 
They  turned  and  twisted,  rose  and  dipped,  slewed  and  slipped  past 

range  after  range  in  a  maze  of  mountain  wonderlands, 
Where  a  man  might  lose  himself  utterly,  and  a  woman  go  mad  at 

the  thought  of  it. 

Slowly  they  lost  the  old  selves  of  little  tame  tastes  and  futile  hastes, 
As  they  dared  the  deserts  and  the  snows  through  blue  days  like  beads 

on  the  trail's  brown  rosary, 
Till  a  thousand  trails   that  converge  from  Old  Mexico  to   Montana 

and  Canada, 
Met  on  tht  last  brown  slopes  where  bronchos  at  sun-up  shy  at  girls  in 

blankets  like  logs  by  the  road. 
They  wanted  water,  oil  and  gas,  ice  cream  and  ice  drinks  and  tense 

minutes  at  the  movies  again. 
And  some  of  them  wandered  into  the  past  in  our  Palace  and  knew 

new  mysteries. 

They  halt  in  our  streets  and  refit,  and  some  of  us  envy  them, 
Who  live  on  the  roof  of  the  world,  and  still  hug  chain  gangs  of  habit, 
As  they  stutter  away  to  the  sunset  with  their  faded  and  fluttering 

pennants, 

And  their  dusty  moving  tents  of  Romance  on  various  adventures. 
And  their  eyes  hold  wider  horizons,   and  their  lips  are  wiser  and 

warmer, 
With  their  little  human  hopes   and  plans,  and  their  hearts   on  the 

sun's  high  pilgrimage. 

Santa  F6  2        22        19 


12 


THE  PLAZA 

Motors  weave  their  mazes  around  it. 
Motors  stand  empty  and  waiting  for  shopping  women, 
Where  dusty,  high  tilted,  spliced  and  weather  stained, 
Swaying  and  creaking,  the  lumbering  ox  wagons 
Rolled  to  the  end  of  the  Trail. 

Cowboys'  bronchos  clatter  over  red  brick  pavements, 

Girls  in  sweaters,  trim  puttees,  trig  riding  breeches, 

Tenderfoot  girls  in  high-heeled  shoes,  khaki  leggins  and  peek-a-boo 

waists, 
Red    capped    school    girls    two  together,    are    riding   bare    back   and 

circling, 

Where  the  gaunt  chargers  of  the  dust  gray  Conquistadores 
Limped  and  flinched  from  bits  and  spurs   that  propped  them   from 

falling. 

Boys  on  bicycles  glide  and  loop, 

Where  the  long  pack  trains  of  mules  and  pack  horses  plodded  and 

slithered. 

Fledgling  priests  from  St.  Michael's  with  purple  pennants  and  ribbons, 
Bound  for  a  ball  game  go  eating  ice  cream  cones, 
Where  the  learned  Padres  tramped  the  long  trail  from  Old  Mexico. 
And  the  Padres'  burros  still  stand  here  sleekly  obsequient. 

Indians  sunburned  red  for  a  thousand  years  from  Te^uque  and  San 

Ildefonso, 

With  their  red  head  bands  and  blankets  of  life  glowing  red  in  them, 
Flame  past  benches  where  bank  clerks,  cigar  drummers,  tourists,  T-B's, 
Cough  and  chatter  like  apes,  and  chew  black  tobacco  and  big  black 

war  head  lines, 

Passing  proudly  and  imperially  erect  and  -self  sufficient, 
As  their  free  fore-runners  were  in  the  days  when  this  place  was  the 

fore-court  of  a  Pueblo  capital. 

The  ghosts  of  those  proud  Pueblo  days  and  the  stark  stone  age  be 
fore  it, 

Ghosts  of  the  old  dear  idle  days  when  men  gossiped  here  of  Marat 
and  Napoleon, 

Ghosts  of  trappers  of  Taos  and  Jesuits  of  Rome  whose  eyes  struck 
sparks  like  swords, 


13 


Ghosts  of  Forty-Niners  who  tarried  to  refit  on  their  gold  rush  west 
ward, 

Ghosts  of  Sibley's  Confederates  who  gambled  as  wildly  here  for  a 
continent, 

Ghosts  of  the  gladdest  girls  who  ever  smiled  at  mountain  sunrise  or 
mandolin  music; 

Ghosts  of  the  saddest  widows  and  prostitutes  who  ever  implored  Our 

Lady  of  Pity, 
Ghosts  of  yesterday,  before  the  railroad  came,  ghosts  of  desperados 

and  their  slayers,  of  Billy  the  Kid,  and  Pat  Garrett, 
Ghosts  of  the  day  before  yesterday,  when  the  first  trails  that  tied 

together  here  were  faint  as  a  dream's  forgetfulness, 
Ghosts  of  Onate  and  Benevides,  of  Castenada,  of  Coronado  and  De 

Vargas, 

Ghosts  of  Doniphan  and  Armijo,  of  Fremont  and  Kit  Carson  and  Lew 

Wallace, 
Ghosts  of  fighters  and  writers  and  builders  of  low  adobes  and  red 

brick  abortions, 
Ghosts  of  the  past  and  today  and  tomorrow,  still  fuse  in  this  focus 

of  living. 

They  live  in  the  laughter  of  children  that  their  fathers'  fathers  begot. 

They  live  in  the  smiles  of  women  whose  bodies  and  souls  they  wor 
shiped  and  lusted  for. 

They  live  in  the  looks  of  men  that  they  loved  and  killed,  and  traded 
with  and  betrayed. 

They  live  in  the  houses  they  builded,  the  trees  they  planted,  the  turf 
they  sodded,  the  pavements  they  laid  here, 

In  this  gray  meeting  place  of  the  winds  of  God  and  the  wills  of  men 
for  the  feet  of  those  that  should  follow  them; 

Here  where  the  trails  meet  and  cross,  as  the  paths  in  the  Plaza  meet 
and  cross, 

In  this  fore-court  of  adventure  by  old  camp  fires  of  longing  and  for 
getfulness; 

Where  the  ghosts  gather  with  the  living  in  the  sunlight  and  moonlight. 

And  the  motors  whirl  like  smoke,  and  the  mountains  stand  sentry 
eternally. 

Santa  Fe  11        15        18 


14 


THE  OLD  PALACE 

It  lies,  a  long,  low  procession  of  life  epitomized,  rough  cast  in  adobe, 
Like  a  slow  and  plodding  line  of  old  Spanish  Conquistadores, 
Straggling  through  dust  and  heat,  dead  beat  footmen  following  sweat 
ing  horsemen, 
Trailing  rusty  lances   idly,   and   leaving  dusty  furrows   in  the   sand 

behind  them, 
On  the  endless  trail  from  Old  Mexico  to  New  Mexico. 

They  crept   past  brown  and   dry  arroyos   and   bare   and   wind-swept 

ridges, 

Gray,  dust  gray,  with  the  steel  in  them  dulled  and  dented 
By  the  bowlders  the  Indians  hurled  at  them  from  the  tops  of  the  tall 

terraced   houses. 
They    crawled    past    beetling   crags,    and    black   mesas,    and    sombre 

shadows  of  mountains  that  menaced  them, 
They  stabbed  the  cactus  with  their  spears  and  drank  its  life-blood  to 

sustain  them,  and  pressed  on  past  passes  eternally  unattainable; 
Till  they  slaked  their  horses'  dusty  throats  at  last  in  the  smooth  gray 

ripples  of  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte. 

They  sweated  past  the  sand  hills  on  old  trading  trails  of  the  Queres 

and  Tehuas, 
They  topped  the  last  lean  ridge,  and  watched  a  little  river  flowing 

westward  through  a  valley  time  had  left  for  them, 
Those  that  were  left  from  the  trail  and  the  trial  the  desert  had  made 

of  them. 
And  they  found  peach  orchards,  and  maize  fields,  and  a  Pueblo,  and 

a  place  for  them; 
For  a  hand  of  life  had  led  them  to  build  here  a  city  and  a  home 

for  them, 

They  were  the  first  forefingers  of  hands  that  wandered  groping, 
The  first  blunt  forefingers  of  a  tide  that  swept  westward  through  the 

ocean  from  bleak  acres  by  Corunna  and  Santandar, 
Down  from  the  orange  and  pomgranate  groves  to  the  wilder  gold  of 

the  sunset, 
Seeking  room  to  spread  and  grow  and  glut  its  hunger  insatiate  for 

gold  and  great  adventuring, 
Eddying  north  from  narrower  limits  near  the  Gulf,  to  the  uplands 

of  a  widening  continent. 
And  the  desert  took  toll  of  them,  but  they  pressed  on  and  multiplied 

until  they  taxed  the  desert. 


15 


They  tithed  it  and  ditched  it  and  built  homes  for  the  spirit  of  the 

race  that  led  them, 
Such  as  the  Moors  made  and  the  Goths  made  when  they  met  and 

mated  in  Spain. 

And  this  old  palace  was  the  type  and  the  chief  of  them. 
They  made  homes  for  flocks  and  herds   such  as  followed  with  the 

Indians  and  women  when  Coronado  marched  from  Mexico, 
As   they   made   homes   for   earlier   folk   migrations   of   all   herdsmen. 

through  the  centuries, 
First  made  a  corral,  then  a  -square  and  a  frontage  of  tenting  for  the 

face  of  it. 

And  the  corral  and  the  tenting  grew  to  a  courtyard  and  a  patio  with 
shaded  arcades, 

Such  as  the  Moors  made  in  Cordoba  with  rows  of  tent  poles  for  their 
first  slim  pillars, 

The  Spanish  captains  and  governors  came  to  herd  nnd  pasture  their 
people  here, 

And  they  made  a  greater  sheep-fold  and  a  Great  House  for  the  herd 
ing,  and  the  people  called  it  El  Palacio — . 

It  stands   as   gray  as   the   sheep  with  tree   trunk   pillars   brown   as 

stripped  posts  of  corrals. 
Made  of  the  same  sun-dried  mud  that  the  older  herders  and  builders 

wrought  with, 
Long  and  broadly  based,  primitive  and  significant  as  a  pueblo  or  a 

pyramid, 
Where  time  made  it  a  gray  and  lasting  monument  of  a   race  that 

passed  and  yet  lives  here. 
It  stands  a  tomb  of  the  past,  and  a  treasure  house  of  gray  traditions 

and  hidden  histories. 

It  stands  like  an  old  gray  college  or  cloister  in  Toledo  or  Salamanca.. 

More  than  tomb  or  college  or  cloister  it  embodies  the  past  and  inter 
prets  it, 

With  the  leaves  of  its  libraries,  the  ticking  of  its  typewriters,  the 
calling  of  its  telephones  talking  to  today  and  tomorrow. 

And  the  brown,  ranked  pillars  of  its  long  arcade  are  the  pillars  of 
proud  triumphal  arches. 

The  great  ghosts  of  the  past  stride  through  them,  and  then  stand 
back  again  and  mingle 

With  the  natives  and  the  tourists,  and  the  painters  and  poets  and 
lovers  in  the  Plaza  in  the  moonlight  who  linger  and  love  it. 

Santa  Fe  10        5        18 


16 


THE  FRUOLES  ROOM 

They  made  an  echo  of  antiquity 

Of  the  room  where  Lew  Wallace  wrote  Ben  Hur  in  the  early  Eighties, 

With  his  leather  covered  Morris  chair  and  leather  covered  lap  board 

on  its  arms  by  one  window. 

And  the  shadows  work  on  it,  and  shadows  of  a  time  as  oli  as  Jerusalem 
Move  in  the  place  or  rest  like  the  words  of  a  finished  manuscript. 

They  fill  the  low  show  cases  in  the  corners, 

And  two  huge  wall  cases  hewed  from  a  three-foot  adobe  partition. 

They  flow  through  low  doors  in  walls  as  thick  at  each  end  of  the  room, 

In  a  low  and  narrow  vista  of  door  on  door  receding 

Through  the  whole  past  of  the  Palace  to  shadowy  doors  before  them. 

They  lie  on  white  wooden  shelves  and  wide  surfaces, 
Shadows  of  the  past  solidified  in  hand-worked  bone  and  stone, 
Shadows  in  hanging  trays  of  glass  like  X-ray  prints  of  the  bones  of  the 

past, 
Skeleton  fragments  of  the  days  when  the  caves  of  Tyuonyi  were  hand 

carved  and  crowded, 

Bone  awls  for  ghostly  garments,  bone  flutes  for  ghostly  music, 
Stone   arrow   heads,   spear  heads   and   cherts   for   shadowy   huntings 

and  killings. 

There  are  deep  shadows  on  rank  on  rank  of  stone  axe  heads  and 

hammers, 
Line  on  line  of  the  story  of  the  felling  of  trees  and  the  wedging  of 

vigas  for  balconies, 
Where  shadowy  women  gossip  and  scold  and  walk  on  the   face   of 

the  cliff, 
And   children   whose   bodies   have  crumpled   are   playing  on   ladders 

whose  substance  is  dust. 
There  are  hard  shadows  of  stone  hand  mills  where  girls  ground  blue 

corn. 
And  the  crude  stone  quern  still  holds  dull  shadows  of  the  rhythm  of 

the  rubbing  that  caressed  it, 
Where  they  bent  brown  breasts  to  it,  that  swelled  as  they  sang  to  it, 

There  are  round  shadows  of  smooth  black  stones  one  could  hide  in 
her  palm  as  she  polished  pottery. 


17 


There  are  shadows  in  the  big  flat  bowls  of  gray  and  white  and  brown 

and  rus-set, 

Where  the  life  of  a  tribe  that  was,  has  slowly  burned  through  the  clay. 
There  are  bowls  whose  circle  is  broken  like  the  circle  of  feasters 

that  dipped  from  them. 
There  are  patterned  shards  like  fragments  of  lives  men  pattern  out 

piece  by  piece. 

There  are  shadowy  shafts  of  arrows  and  hand-carved  stones  for  their 

smoothing, 
Shadows  of  the  craft  of  old  men  who  fashioned  and  fitted  and  flew 

with  them. 
There   are    throwing    sticks    and    praying    sticks    and    prayer    plume 

holders  of  clay. 
There    are    brown    and    white    turkey    feathers    intact,    and    strange 

ornaments 

For  the  great  high  cave  of  the  kiva  deep-niched  in  the  cliff, 
Like  a  lost  high  altar  of  living  in  a  ghostly  cathedral  whose  transepts 

are  builded  in  air. 

There  are  shadows  of  shadowy  symbols  of  dead  rituals, 

Shadows  of  the  dancers'  plumes  that  felt  brown  feet  that  felt  high 

ladders, 
And  the  hard,  brown  rocks  of  the  valley  when  life  was  vivid  and 

good  to  them; 
Till  the  last  lone   fire   at  the  foot  of  the  cliff  died  out  on  a  dead 

black  winter's  night, 

And  the  last  lost  wailing  echo  of  living  sang  to  it, 
And  to  life  that  writes  in  shadowy  symbols,  broken  pictures,  dying 

men  and  gospels  misspelled, 
In  Tyuonyi  even  as  Jerusalem. 

Santa  Fe  12        30        18 


18 


THE  ALCOVE 

The  light  streams  down  from  above  through  a  gray  wire  glass  sky  light, 
Like  cloudy  light  that  falls  in  a  shadowy  sea  cave, 
Where  pearls  and  corals  glow,  and  abalones  slowly  open  living  opals, 
Near  flame-tipped   sea  shells,   obscured  by  sea-green   sea  weed  and 

great  red  sea  fans, 
Under  the  feathery  shimmering  shifting  of  frondage,  water,  color  and 

light, 
The  hard,  brown  rock  stands  out  like  tie  ribs  of  being. 

The  ocean  shimmers  through  the  hues  of  translucent  canvases; 

In   a  stirles-3   tide   of  air   that   floods   the   Grand    Canyon's   terraced 

abysses, 

Through  frail  and  rifted  veils  of  mist  that  drift  apart  and  reveal; 
Opals  and  pearls  and  dead  red  spoils  of  fossil  centuries, 
Far-flung  treasure  of  Titans  washed  by  the  waves 
Round  points  and  bays  and  hazy  purple  coasts  of  sunset  and  sunrise. 

It  beats  round  the  high  piled  massive  of  the  silent  mountains  of  Taos, 
Like  a  tall  sea  island  rising  between  the  tide  and  the  sky, 
Out  of  a  great  gray  plain  toward  the  cloud  drift  of  spent  whirlwinds, 
Eddying,  swirling  slowly  till  the  hills  lift  up  their  hands, 
And  strain  down  snow  and  rain  that  the  spring  may  blossom  again. 
And  the  rocks  that  wrestle  with  heaven  for  a  parapet  for  far  plains, 
Stand  in  strong  blues  and  sage  grays  as  a  strong  sea  island  stands  > 
through  ages. 

The  ocean  rises  and  flowers  again  in  April  through  new  fruit  trees, 
Ghosts  of  dead  seas  and  seasons  that  spread  and  lapped  through  the 

valleys  rise  with  the  swelling  of  sap. 

Apple  trees  blossom  in  spray,  and  peach  trees  raise  pink  swirls  of  fire. 
Below  them  snow  still  lingers  in  blue  shadows  as  polar  as  shades  of 

icebergs  in  sea  lanes, 
In  the  lee  of  the  low  gray  adobes  with  red  peppers  still  hanging  by 

the  doors. 

The  ocean  moulded  the  walls  of  these  churches, 

Of  Ranches  de  Taos  that  stands  like  a  rock  sea-flung  by  Spain  towards 

the  north  and  the  mountains, 
Weathered  and  rounded,  storm  beaten  by  years, 
Of  the  shadow  netted  Sanctuario  by  Chimayo, 


19 


Soaking  in  light  in  the  hills  like  a  sponge  that  clings  to  the  cleft  of 

a  reef; 

And  of  the  brown  cathedral  corner  tower  in  Santa  Fe, 
Like  a  crumbling  -shore  rock  bastion  of  a  faith  today  forgotten  more 

and  more. 

The  ocean  moulded  the  growth  of  flat  acres  of  grease  weed, 
Like  a  low  sea  forest  raised  from  the  ooze  to  the  sunlight, 
Where  salt  gray  waves  once  rippled  and  slowly  drained  away. 
The  ocean  shaped  the  trees  that  veil  and  reveal  wide  mountain  vistas, 
Poplars  pointed  like  rocks  and  cottonwoods  spreading  like  sea  weed, 
With  fingers  of  tides  in  the  veins  of  each  leaf,  and  the  spreading  of 
eddies  in  circles  concentric  of  years  hid  in  gray  trunks. 

The  ocean  moulded  the  hand  and  the  mind  of  the  man  who  made 
these  pictures, 

Out  of  its  salt  spring  of  being  that  knows  not  dying  or  dry  rot, 
That  ripples  and  wells  through  the  ages  of  sunlight  and  starlight  and 

moonlight. 

It  moulded  and  made  and  sent  him  to  silently  preach  to  the  people, 
In  this  small  side  chapel  of  service  unceasing  in  today's  gray  cathedral, 
Where  men  light  pictures  to  God  instead  of  candles  and  lamps, 
Silently  preaching  the  rhythm  and  the  flow  and  the  glow  of  the  tides 

of  all  living 
Till  the  hand  of  the  painter  is  dust,  and  his  mind  is  a  mist  in  the 

midnight, 

And  the  gleam  of  the  strength  in  his  soul  like  a  pearl  in  a  sea  cave 
In  a  gray  little  alcove  of  time  is  a  treasure  of  light  that  remains. 

Santa  Fe  11        24        18 


20 


PALACE  UNDERTAKING  PARLORS 

Late  at  night,  next  to  the  post  office, 

A  huge  square  window  with  one  crack  in  it  gapes  darkly, 

Like  the  black  mouth  of  a  cave  of  death  where  silence  whispers 

All  lost  horrors  of  the  past,  and  today's  last  hopelessness. 

Two  green  shaded  lamps  like  the  eyes  of  a  monster  that  menaces, 
Look  past  undrawn  shades  for  people  that  pass  in  the  street, 
Passing  oblivious,   restless,  foreboding,   horror-seized 
Hundreds  and  thousands  of  times,  at  noon  and  at  midnight, 
To  come  here,  sooner  or  later. 

By  those  two  lamps  two  men  are  sittng,  keeping  watch, 
Always  someone  sitting,  keeping  watch, 
Smoking,  yawning,  saying  little  and  listening 
For  the  tense  ringing  of  a  nerve-racked  telephone, 
Spring  and  summer,  and  autumn  and  winter. 

This  is  the  gate  of  despair,  and  of  dreams  that  are  nightmares. 

And  here  the  dead  go  first  when  they  begin 

The  long,  dark  journey  into  deeper  darkness, 

Down  a  black  funnel  that  narrows  faster  and  faster 

Through  the  grave's  close  trap-door  to  utter  forgetfulness. 

The  men  who  sit  here  learned  their  craft  in  Egypt  before  the  Pyramids. 
They  have  made  mummies  before,  and  their  eyes  and  their  lips 
Look  out  of  the  living  mummy  cases  and  whisper  tonele&sly, 
As  the  priests  of  the  dead  at  Luxor  and  Thebes  whispered  at  night 

as  they  worked;  9 

Taking  the  senseless  shapes  that  women  bore  and  loved,  and  men 

married  and  traded  with, 
Hiding  horror  and  disease  and  the  taint  of  tears  in  soft  wrappings 

of  silence. 

People  who  lie  awake  with  nerves  that  twitch,  go  by  and  shudder. 
But  a   child   pauses   and   looks   at   the   two   green   lights   and   longs 

for  them. 
And  a  man  with  a  heart  like  a  cracked  egg  shell,  edges  night  after 

night  nearer  the  great  cracked  window  glass, 
Finding  there  before  him  the  rest  that  he  craves  and  needs, 
Knowing  that  in  all  the  world  this  one  dim  room  belongs  to  him. 
And  his  tired  heart  tells  him, 

Death  is  one  breath  in  an  endless  march  of  interminable  atoms; 
Through  night's  long  passionless  ecstacy. 

Santa  F6  2        12        19 


21 
THE  CORNER  DRUG  STORE 

The  children  love  to  come  here, 

To  sit  on  high  wire  stools  before  the  big  mirror, 

To  hear  the  'Soda  fountain  sizzle  and  squirt, 

To  play  with  straws  and  bubbles  in  tall  glasses, 

And  swallow  frozen  ecstacy  by  lingering  spoonfulls. 

Here  is  one  place  where  all  are  children, 

At  one  time  or  another,  sooner  or  later, 

Sundays  or  holidays,  particularly  so 

Since  the  town  and  the  state  went  dry  last  October. 

We   are   children    before    the   news    stands    between    two   big   front 

windows, 

Like  a  flashy  display  of  children's  toys  at  Xmas  time, 
Where  we  see  ourselves  mirrored  in  toy  magazines  for  toy  people, 
And  cheaper  Sunday  papers  from  Denver  and  Los  Angeles. 

We  are  children  at  the  candy  counter. 

We  are  children  in  a  corner  near  the  big  mirror, 

Stocked  to  start  ten  beauty  factories,  wholesale;  working  overtime, 

With  lip  sticks  and  potted  rouge,  cold  creams  and  face  washes, 

Talcum  powder,  radium  soap,  liquid  shampoo,  hair  removers, 

}31ue  Jay  corn  plasters,  rubber  reducers,  electric  vibrators, 

And  superfluous  vanity  bags  for  superfluous  women, 

Little  walking  vanity  bags  themselves  of  small  envies  and  appetites, 

And  small  spoiled  children. 

Tragedy  walks  here  too  among  the  children, 

As  a  huge  cowman  or  sheriffs  deputy  walks  with  a  six-gun  half  hidden. 
Tragedy  comes  on  tiptoe  to  a  telephone  and  whispers  tensely. 
Tragedy    stands    twitching   by   a   prescription   counter   watching   his 

watch. 

Tragedy  smiles  thin-lipped  at  a  friend,  and  stifles  a  cough, 
Hurrying  away  with  a  bottle  of  Scott's  Emulsion  hidden  in  a  muff. 
Tragedy  feels  a  truss,  and  hungrily  watches  the  children. 
Tragedy  comes  with  a  face  no  sane  man  might  marry,  and  frowns 

at  them: 

At  the  children  for  whom  all  our  drugs  and  vanities  are  devised, 
The  children  for  whom  we  close  saloons  and  nursery  windows,  and 

make  war  and  peace, 
The  children  who  come  here  as  their  elders  come  here; 

From  lonely  ranch  houses,  shadowed  adobes,  furnished  rooms,  hotel 

lobbies,  toy  town  houses, 

To  buy  aspirin  and  frayed  aspiration  in  a  rag  time  phonograph  record, 
To  buy  patent  medicines  and  patent  appliances  for  killing  time  and 

ring  worms  and  cockroaches, 
For  curing  boils  and  boredom,  facial  defects  and  soul  insufficiencies; 

To  our  temple  of  gossip  and  healing  of  all  ills  real  and  imaginary, 
To  sit  on  a  stool  by  a  counter  and  swing  their  legs  as  the  children  do, 
To  see  life  a  spectacle  and  a  drama,  hair  guessed  and  half  hoped  for, 
To  watch  it  without  them  and  in  them  in  a  great  big  mirror  before 

them — 
On  Sundays — and  weekdays — and  holidays. 

Santa   Fe  12        8        18 


22 


ROSARIO'S 

At  the  end  of  the  street,  on  the  roof  of  the  shop,  backed  by  blue  «3ky, 
An  old  gray  Mexican  ox-cart  stands  on  solid  wheels  hand-sawed  from 

logs  that  sawed  the  desert. 

Below  in  the  ghost  shop's  windows  are  wampum  and  arrow  heads, 
Spear  heads  and  cherts  of  flint  and  black  obsidian,  bleakly  mingled 
With   Navajo   bracelets    and    rings    beaten   and   punched    from   dead' 

Mexican  dollars. 
Pottery  rain-gods  with  eyes  of  dead  men  peer  at  you. 

Inside  in  deep  shadows  are  piles  of  dusty  blankets, 

Woven  by  long  dead  hands  that  paled  as  the  wool  sucked  out 

All  the  color  from  old  lives  till  the  last  red  thread  was  lost  in  grayness. 

Long  lost  Navaho  sheep  and  Mexican  flocks  near  Chimayo 

Fed  and  their  blood  beat  red,  and  these  stripes  and  wedges  are  left 

of  them. 

Snow  and  midnight  mix  in  one  and  the  colors  of  springtime  and  sunset 
Live  in  a  rainbow  web  of  wool  that  Rosario  spreads  on  the  floor. 

Pottery  from  Zuni,  Zia,  Acoma,  Laguna,  clutters  the  dusty  tables, 
With  painted  shadows   of  flowers  and  leaves   and   birds  and   chain- 
lightning. 

Great  black  lustrous  jars  from  San  Juan  and  Santa  Clara  overshadow 
Hopi  ladles  and  bowls,  yellow  and  brown  like  the  rocks  of  the  mesas. 
Heavy  stencil-like  patterns  of  fire  and  night  from  San  Ildefonso  and 

San  Domingo  mix 

With  crude  Tesuque  ash  trays  and  little  clay  birds  and  animals, 
Striped,  smeared,  absurd,  wierd,  and  naively  bewitching, 
And  black  and  gray  prehistoric  bowls  unglazed,  crooked,  coil-woven. 

There  are  baskets  hanging  from  rafters,  baskets  on  floor  and  walls; 
Big  Navaho  marriage  baskets  with  their  mountains  of  upper  and  lower 

worlds, 
Black  and   white   trays,   Pima  and   Apache,  spotted   with   shapes   of 

small  men  and  Gila  monsters, 
Hopi  placques,  coarse  of  weave,  some  low-keyed,  and  some  like  fire 

and  sapphire, 
Rotting  bottoms  of  baskets  made  by  hands  that  died  a  thousand  years 

ago. 
And  two  frayed  sandal  heels  of  yucca  fibre  from  an  Otowi  mummy  a 

thousand  years   older. 


23 


Painted  saw-edged  dance  sticks  ending  in  birds  and  burros  crowd 
Buckskin  and  bead-tagged  pouches  and  purses  in  dusty  show  cases. 
Hopi  Kachinas,  masks  and  dolls,  and  shamans'  dead  magic  are  jumbled 
With   carved   and   tinted   tablitas,   tall   wooden   tiaras    for   dances   of 

dead  men, 
And  dead  children's  tufted  rattles  like  slim  war  clubs  of  dim  warriors 

with  dyed  hide  sewn  on  them. 

In  a  corner  a  tall  war  drum  blue  and  yellow  as  bare  torsos  of  dead 

dancers, 
Stands   beside  a  scarred  metate   that  ground   ghosts'   blue  corn  and 

yellow  corn. 
There  are  horse  hair  quirts  and  leather  quirts  and  belts  of  long  dead 

riders, 
With  the  wicked  Mexican  spurs  and  the  silver  bossed  and  the  braided 

bridles, 
And   saucers   filled   with   beads   and    coral,   turquoise    and    opal    and 

Mexican  money. 

There  is  a  huge  old  dusty  safe  that  Rosario  opens  slowly, 

Where  he  hides  dim  writings   of  men   long  dead,   and   trinkets   and 

jewels  of  long  dead  women, 
Names  written  large  in  three  races'  history,  and  mystery  magnetized 

and  tangible, 
In   great   Navaho   silver  bead    necklaces   with    squash   flower   spurs, 

and  in  crosses  and  swastikas, 
Worn   gold    for   fleshless    fingers,    and   thin    ear-loops    for    ears    that 

hear  nothing. 

He  has  old  seals  that  stamped  power  on  yellow  papers, 

Cut  by  Greeks  in  Rome  in  the  image  of  Rome's  first  emperors, 

And  one  that  came  down  through  a  pope  and  a  king  and  a  viceroy, 

reveals  Rosario's  profile, 
Hard  and  shrewd  and  old  as  a  Latin  and  an  Indian,  and  loving  all 

things 

That  have  gray  power  in  themselves  to  make  their  keepers  fit  for  them. 
And  Rosario  stands  with  his  ghosts  in  his  hands  like  a  priest  of  the 

past, 
And  a  ghost  of  the  pride  and  the  power  of  Spain  and  the  Pueblos  that 

perishing  persist  here. 

Santa  Fe  1        29        19 


24 


SAN  MIGUEL 

The  old  Catholic  college  has  a  gray  stone  front  of  many  windows. 
And  I  sometimes  wonder  where  the  eyes  are  that  looked  out  of  them, 
Little  fledgling  priests  that  were  homesick  often  and  lonely, 
Knowing  as  little  of  the  world  as  a  babe  unborn  and  resenting  it. 

Compline,  vespers  and  matins,  and  the  length  of  interminable  litanies, 
Fasts  and  penance  and  prayers,  forever,  one  after  the  other, 
Midnight  masses  and  early  wakings  in  winter,  and  stories  and  lessons 

to  be  learned 
Of  saints  in  torment,  tormented  by  a  God  men  worshipped  tormenting 

them, 
Stories  that  spoiled  the  summer  sun,  and  made  the  spring  a  mockery. 

The  little  boy  priests  went  harnessed  in  black  and  harrassed 

By  memories  of  autumn  days  when  apples  dropped  in  their  mothers' 

laps, 
Long  mornings  on  mountains  when  they  found  the  pinyon  nuts  and 

pitched  their  fingers  husking  them, 
Days  when  they  watched  lean  horses  and  colts  like  a  merry-go-round 

on  -shining  circus  days,  thrashing  dry  wheat, 
When  dust  and  chaff  hung  high  in  air  in  yellow  beams  of  sunlight 

dancing  for  them. 

They  have  gathered  ripe  grain  for  the  threshing  in  the  chapel  arid 

the  cloisters, 
Where  gray  faced  priests  go  round  and  round,  black  shadows  of  God 

and  shamans  of  midnight, 
Pondering  a  pit  of  eternity,  and  heirs  to  all  the  terrors  and  torments 

of  the  ages. 

And  the  dim  contagion  grows  where  they  shut  up  boys  beside  them, 
And  drive  lean  horses  of  habit  round  and  round,  day  by  day  on  their 

lives. 

The  old  Catholic  college  is  a  gray  barracks  of  bitterness. 
But  birds  build  nests  around  it,  the  sun  and  moon  regard  it, 
As  it  looks  across  the  valley  to  old  gray  stone  walls  of  the  State 

Penitentiary. 
And  I  like  better  to  think  of  eyes  looking  out  of  its  windows  at  birds 

winging  to  the  mountains, 

Than  of  the  downcast  lids  that  serve  life  sentences  to  habit  here, 
For  worshiping  shadows   ceaselessly  and  wronging  life  with  frayed 

rituals. 

Santa  Fe  11        18        18 


25 


THE  OLDEST  CHURCH 

There  was  a  cross  in  the  open  here  where  the  Padres  planted  Christ's 

standard, 
Dusty  foot-soldiers  of  Spain  and  her  church  taking  possession  of  the 

land. 

There  was  a  cross  of  wood  and  a  new  strange  shadow  on  the  hills, 
And  a  deepening  shade  in  the  minds  and  wild  hearts 
Of  the  Pueblos  and  nomads  who  watched  it  and  hated  it. 

There  was  a  cross  of  metal  in  old  San  Miguel 
Before  the  Pilgrims  set  foot  in  the  fog  at  Provincetown. 
There  was  a  cross  of  metal  in  a  cage  of  sun-dried  mud, 
A  cage  that  was  made  when  metal  first  was  forged  and  before  it, 
When  the  first   cavemen  builders   roofed  raw  trenches,   and   carved 
their  rude  dugouts. 

There  was  a  cage  of  shadows  here,  and  the  Indians  hated  it. 
And  they  loved  their  kivas  better,  and  there  was  bloodshed  here, 
When  the  great  Pueblo  rebellion  rose  in  a  long  brown  tidal  wave, 
And  they  stoned  the  priests  and  martyred  them,  and  the  robes  of  the 

mass  were  rent  and  defiled, 
Where   a  sunbeam  brightens   a  gray  clay  wall,  and  a  motor  glides 

past  the  last  of  the  Trail  to  the  Plaza. 

There  was  a  cro&s  of  metal  in  the  sword  hilt  of  each  Conquistador 
Who  came  and  held  the  land  and  heard  bronze  bells  and  ate  God's 

body  here, 
In   metal    armor   that   gleamed    in    the    light   of   tall    pale    guttering 

candles. 
And  the  men  and  the  metal  swords  and  lances,  bits  and  spurs  that 

rode  the  land  and  rowelled  it 
Are  lost  like  yesterday's  snow,  and  these  old  mud  walls  and  carved 

roof  beams  outwore  them. 

There  is  a  cross  of  wood  in  the  open  here  on  the  tower  of  old  San 

Miguel, 
Crowning  a  church  like  a  slice  of  deeply  eroded  gray  cliff  or  great 

clay  bank, 

With  two  stone  slanting  butresses  against  the  time-worn  face  of  it, 
Propping  the  walls  of  a  tomb  of  the  past  with  flowers  like  canticles 

growing  in  front  of  it, 
A  crumbling  tomb  in  an  older  dome  of  God's  blue  beauty  embracing  it. 

Santa  Fe  2        25        18 


26 


THE  HAT  SHOP 

There   is   a   telephone   pole   near  the   First   National   Bank   that   the 

horses  have  chewed. 

Puye  was  standing  tied  there  one  day  as  I  rode  round  the  Plaza. 
I  pulled  up  Gray  Leg  and  peered  past  the  leaf-sprayed  shade  of  the 

hat  shop  window. 

Some  one  was  standing  inside  with  her  profile  pointing  to  a  mirror, 
As  Mike  Armijo's  pointer  Lai  stands  when  she  flushes  a  bird. 

Some  one  was  standing  inside  with  one  finger  fussing  with  her 
curly  hair, 

In  a  brown  leather  hunting  coat,  tan  riding  breeks  and  wrap-puttees 
as  symmetrical 

As  the  sweet,  slim  curves  their  close  spirals  defined  and  clung  to, 

Some  one  with  a  hat  in  her  hand  and  four  more  on  the  counter  be 
side  her, 

Some  one  all  curves  that  clung  ,and  melted  and  mingled  in  motion  that 
sang  to  me. 

She  lifted  the  first,  and  she   seemed  to  kiss  and  caress  her  small 

head  with  it. 

Kings  have  been  crowned  with  less  splendor  and  pleasure  in  living. 
She  laid  the  red  hat  aside  ,and  the  blue  and  yellow  and  lilac  and 

black,  and  they  all  looked  well  on  her. 
And  she  frowned  a  little  and  dimpled  and  smiled,  and  they  all  looked 

well  on  her. 
She  sang  a  little  softly,  and  shuddered  at  a  hat  of  furred  horror  in 

the  mirror  behind  her, 
As  forest  things  stooping  and  drinking  from  a  river,  shiver  at  fear  in 

monstrous  fur  that  is  mirrored  close  behind  them. 

While  she  debated  I  discovered  frontiers  of  the  forest  in  the  hat  shop, 
With  its  bare  hat  forms  like  empty  bird  nests  scattered  about  it. 
While  she  fluttered  by  the  mirror  like  a  bird  that  preens  itself  be 
fore  a  pool  that  smiles  at  it, 

I  believed  that  the  first  hats  for  women  were  singing  birds'  nests, 
With  a  plume  or  two  thrust  through  one  side  as  they  tried  them  on, 
Naked  and  flushed  and 'smiling  as  children  who  first  discover  beauty, 
As  they  discovered  their  own  images  in  pools  that  smiled  at  them, 
and  barely  knew  them. 

Santa  Fe  12        5  18 


27 


THE  TEA  ROOM 

There  used  to  be  a  red  parrot  swingng  over  the  doorway. 

Time   and   the  winds  outwore   it. 

Now  all  the  parrots  are  inside,  but  Vera  Deane  insists 

They  come  with  new  novels  in  their  muffs,  and  they  go  with  stale 

gossip  in  their  mouths 
"My  dear,  you  musn't  quote  me,  but  between  you  and  me  and  that 

telephone  pole" — 

Some  day  a  younger  Homer  will  wrte  an  epic  of  small-town  telephones. 

They  borrow  the  use  of  hers  and  she  doesn't  like  it. 

When  she  is  busy  behind  the  screen  they  start  new  scandals. 

And  the  red  parrots  on  the  walls  and  chintzes  chatter  and  sneer  at 

them. 
And  the  green  parrots  on  the  hand  bells  preen 'their  painted  feathers 

and  grin  at  them. 

She  brings  us  tea  in  yellow  cups  on  red  and  green  tables. 

Over  the  mellow  brew  they  perpetrate  eternal  platitudes, 

And  scatter  litle  dry  social  lies  as  they  crumble  bread  and  cake  crumbs. 

They  sip   straw-colored   complacency  for  the   tame  little   snobs   that 

they  are. 
And  their  souls  are  as  brittle  as  china  they  chip,  the  lying  little  souls 

that  they  are. 

She  has  made  us  a  clearing  house  of  small  lies  and  smaller  jealousies, 
That  she  sells  with  her  candies  and  her  cakes,  that  we  do  not  suf 
ficiently  thank  her  for. 
For  lies  must  be  cleared  as  coffee  must  be  cleared  before  the  truth 

in  them  is  fit  to  lie  awake  with. 
And  the  wives  clack  back  to  their  men  at  home  and  treat  us  more 

humanly  for  it. 

And  I  saw  a  prettier  girl,  even  than  V.  D.  there  yesterday, 
And  our  tea  room  that  tagged  four  divorced  last  year,  has  mothered 
eight  weddings  this  winter  already. 

Santa  Fe  10        22        18 


28 


THE  BANK 

They  have  gutted  the  Bank  Saloon  and  sold  the  stock. 

But  they  left  the  big  game  heads,  and  the  glassy  eyes  look  down 

Where  big  men  clinked  down  big  silver  dollars  with  big  guns  belted 

to  them, 
And  drank  big  drinks  of  forty  rod,  and  filled  their  hip  pockets. 

They  had  strong  stuff  like  dynamite  to  get  quick  action  when  it  was 

needed. 
When  the  West  was  one  great  construction  camp,  and  shoot  slugs  In 

strong  men's  guts; 
To  bore   through   blizzards   with   them,   when   the   fit   stood  up   and 

survived, 
And  the  weak  went  to  hell  in  a  hurry,  and  a  man  tied  tight  to  his 

friend. 

Big  men  started  big  things  here  and  planned  bigger  ones. 

The   army  went  and   the   cowmen  came,   prospectors   plunked   down 

nuggets, 

And  juggled  quartz  with  sparks  in  it  that  set  eight  states  afire, 
And  harnessed  railroads  to  cities,  and  ditched  and  harvested  deserts. 

Shades  of  the  shaggy  old  timers,  trappers,  hunters  and  trailsmen, 
Section    hands,    congressmen,    cowboys,    governors,    mule    skinners, 

sheriffs,  miners,  state  senators, 

Linger  here  and  look  at  shop  girls  with  curls  like  Mae  Marsh 
Wrapping  up  boxes  of  candy  fresh  from   Chicago  for  lungers  from 

Boston  in  sombreros. 

A  cigar  clerk  watches  two  high  school  pool  room  boys  piking  at  a 

punch-board  by  a  soda  fountain,  formerly  a  bar, 
And  school  girls  dancing  with  the  grandmothers  between  movie  shows 

at  the  Paris, 
On  the  floor  where  the  tenderfeet  walked  in  the  air  to  the  sound  of 

the  bullets  splintering  planks, 
In  this  place  that  they  call  a  cabaret,  which  is  French  today  for  a 

rubber-stamped  dance  hall. 

New  York  10         29         19 


29 


THE  GARAGE 

The  gray  stucco  garage  lies  just  back  of  the  Plaza. 

By  the  doors  are  two  gay  painted  birds  that  the  Pajarito  cave  men 

put  on  pottery. 

Inside  is  a  prison  for  speed  with  two  greasy  pits  where  they  torture  it. 
And  a  boy  at  a  vise  on  a  grimy  bench  is  filing  new  links  for  its  fetters. 

The  boy  at  the  bench  has  broken  bronchos 
And  he  feels  as  often  as  not  that  his  motor  cars  are  alive, 
On  his  flat  gray  greasy  stable  floor  standing  still  for  him, 
And  lolloping  by  outside  and  ripping  and  snorting. 

He  thinks  it  is  great  to  bridle  something  that  bucks 

With  stuff  that  is  stronger  than  rope  or  rawhide  and  cinch  it. 

He   has   been  here   only  six  weeks   and   he   hasn't  had   time   to   get 

homesick 
For  the  far  dim  ranges  at  dawn  and  the  wind  on  the  warpath. 

It  feels  good  to  be  here  in  the  hot  throbbing  heart  of  the  town, 
To  set  a  turn  buckle  on  things,  and  to  mix  up  with  every  one's  life 
To  make  of  speed  a  modern  commodity  as  simply  sold 
As  the  water  one  turns  on  and  off  in  any  one's  bath  room. 

Out  in  the  old  livery  stable  yard  they  are  staking  an  extension, 
And  burning  up  rickety  stable  hacks  and  sun-warped  carriages, 
That  carried  the  passion  and  pathos  of  the  past,  and  its  crime  and 

adventuring. 
Through  fifty  years  of  the  days  that  are  done  to  its  homes  and  hotels 

and  the  trains  and  the  state  capitol. 

New  York  10        29        19 


30 


THE  SWIMMING  POOL 

There  is  a  swimming  pool  in  an  orchard  on  a  side  hill, 

With  a  rough  stone  rim  around  it,  and  limpid  laughing  water  running 

and  diving 
From  a  sun-lit  irrigation  ditch,  splashing  and  flashing  into  it. 

The  trees  grow  close  around  it  and  shelter  and  shade  it, 
Red  barked  apple  trees,  red  as  the  clay  of  the  path  that  tiptoes  down 
From  the  house  where  the  girls  are  hidden,  and  the  morning  breath 
lessly  waits  for  them. 

Sunrise  lingers  to  see  them  running  lightly  on  tiptoe, 
Slim  as  two  boys  in  their  trim  boys'  bathing  suits  that  clirifj  to  them, 
Down  the  red  path  where  white  apple  petals  fall  on  them  lingering. 

Birds  in  the  branches  sing  to  them,  the  lights  and  the  shadows  bring 

to  them, 
Something  soft  as  a  butterfly's  touch,  and  the  swish  of  flowers  and 

dew  on  swift  bare  arms  and  feet, 
Feeling  earth  and  air  as  they  fleet;  and  the  flicker  of  wings,  of  leaves 

and  of  light  all  thrill  in  them. 

Branch  tips  touch  them  brushing  by,  breezes  clutch  their  lips  and  their 

hair. 
The  color  of  the  sky  and  the  scent  of  the  day  is  sweet  to  them  while 

she  still  is  a  girl  to  greet  them. 
And  the  water  ripples  to  meet  them,  and  splashes  and  flashes  and 

dimples  and  plays  with  them. 

The  sun  climbs  high  to  spy  on  them  and  to  dry  their  hair  as  side 

by  side 
They  sit  on  the  round  stone  rim  of  the  pool  with  their  little  toes 

tickling  the  water. 
And  they  laugh  at  the  light  and  new  nests  in  the  trees  and  a  little 

gray  kitten  that  cralws  to  them. 

The  snow  of  the  mountain  comes  closer  today  like  the  warmth  of  the 

spring  to  them, 
Like  the  buds  that  burst,  the  petals  that  fall,  the  sap  that  rises,  the 

grass  that  grows,  the  breeze  that  blows,  the  scent  and  the  song 

that  flows  to  them, 
And  every  spring  of  all  time  is  a  pulse  that  quickens,  a  voice  that 

wakens,  a  smile  that  trembles  in  them. 

For  life  today  in  Santa  Fe  on  the  last  day  of  April, 
Is  a  girl  half  naked  and  wholly  happy  smiling  and  sunning  herself 
On  the  mountain  rim  of  a  world  of  light  and  the  sky's  high  bright 
blue  swimming  pool. 

Santa   F6  2        28        19 


31 


THE  STUDIO 

There  is  a  great  gray  north  window  and  a  big  red  brick  open  fire  place, 
With  a  noble  red  brick  shelf  above  the  fire  hole  bearing  pipes,  Hopi 

and  Tesque  pottery,  rain  gods  and  ash  trays. 
There  are  coal  black  jars  of  San  Juan  with  pussy  willows  in  them  on 

the  adobe  window  ledge, 

And  a  painted  jar  from  Zia  crowded  with  brushes  to  the  right  of  them, 
Between  them  red,  blue,  yellow,  and  speckled  ears  of  corn  and  twisted 

paint  tubes, 
And  beyond  them  a  hillside  of  snow  and  a  sky  too  gray  for  painting. 

On  a  small  table  by  the  fire  stands  a  green  typewriter  backed  by  a 
yellow  placque  from  the  Second  'Mesa. 

A  larger  table  by  the  window  is  stacked  with  books,  papers,  ink, 
tobacco,  hunting  knives  and  photograph  prints  and  plates. 

There  are  two  tall  easels  splashed  with  paint  in  front  of  a  desk  and 
a  gramaphone  cabinet. 

One  of  them  bears  a  thumb  box  sketch  of  a  canyon  road  with  a  big 
blue  mountain  beyond  it; 

And  that  road  goes  winding  away  all  night  and  day  to  new  wonder 
lands. 

One  of  them  carries  a  great  brown  picture  of  the  Pueblo  at  Santa 

Clara, 
With  three  clay  bee  hive  ovens  in  the  foreground  grouped  like  three 

mountain   peaks. 
And  the  blue  and  green  mountains  beyond  them  carry  the  lines  and 

contours  of  the  Pueblo  roof  line  to  the  sky  line. 
There  are  streaky  shadows  of  vigas,  and  slanting  ladders  and  scaffolds 

like  well  sweeps. 
And  the  blue  of  a  rifted  sky  comes  back  to  blue  shadows  that  seep 

through   the   ground. 

A  black  and  white  dog  sprawls  slack  by  a  fire  that  smoulders  gray 

and  black. 

A  man  in  khaki  with  a  brindled  cat  in  his  lap  writes  on  blue  paper. 
A  man  with  a  grizzled  beard  and  a  big  pipe  in  it  clatters  at  his  table 

in  the  corner. 

For  today  is  too  gray  to  paint  in  his  laboratory  of  light  in  the  hills. 
The   experiment   smoulders   like   the   fire   while   he   fusses   with   old 

photograph  plates, 
Till  the  sun  brings  out  new  and  brighter  precipitates  dripping  from 

the  tips  of  his  brushes, 
And  the  lenses  of  his  eyes  clear,  as  the  great  lens  of  the  sky  clears. 

Santa  Fe  12         18        T8 


32 


CAS  A  PINT  AD  A 

Around  the  long  table  with  two  stained  wood  benches, 

We  sat  and  ate  and  drank  and  spread  out  books  and  pictures; 

Indian  colored  drawings  inevitably  authentic, 

And  tags  of  last  year's  New  Art,  already  stale  and  ludicrous. 

We  opened  books  for  two  years  with  little  wrangling. 

252  volumes  of  New  Poetry  stacked  on  shelves  or  slung  in  corners, 

22  varieties  of  monthlies,  weeklies,  dailies  and  quarterlies  dribbling 

and  quoting  it. 
We  read  proofs  and  smiled,  or  pinned  ribald  rhymes  to  them. 

Poets  and  painters  darkened  the  doors  or  tapped  on  the  windows, 
Poets  cleaned  pipes  in  corners,  or  orated  in  full  focused  candle  light. 
Poets  and  painters  debated  of  Art  and  its  Mission  and  their  Mission 

interminably. 
Poets  lounged  on  the  porch,  and  looked  at  sunsets  and  stars,  and 

silently  escaped  to  them. 

One  of  them  taken  to  task  concerning  his  own  stolid  egotism, 
Discoursed    of   painted    women,    painted   houses,    painted    poets    and 

painted  painters  briefly. 

"The  virtue  of  this  gray  adobe  in  the  mountains",  he  said 
"Is  not  the  red  strips  of  paints  and  the  framed  paint  patterns  on 

the  walls. 

"It  is  a  house  of  life  on  the  loma,  for  all  its  frivolities. 
"People  live  here  and  grow,  and  come  and  go,  and  remember  it. 
"People  are  better  than  poems,  and  houses  are  better  than  pictures. 
"Homes  are  better  than  art  shops,   and  whoever  talked   shop  in  a 
dream?" 

Santa  Fe  12        14        18 


33 


THE  OLD  BELLS 

Two  old  bells  hanging  in  a  garden  back  of  the  Sisters'  Sanitarium, 
Swung  on  a  gray  wood  frame  the  height  of  my  ears  and  my  eyes. 
I  had  passed  them  a  hundred  times  before,  and  never  discovered  them. 
One  day  from  Gray  Leg's  back  beyond  the  old  adobe  wall  I  watched 
and  wanted  them. 

Old  bells  that  are  silent  make  the  most  beautiful  music, 
Like  lips  that  are  dead  and  loved  and  kissed  by  time's  slow  shadows, 
By  the  tender  touch  of  the  years  and  their  children  remembering 
Something  that  dies  and  yet  lives  in  the  soul  of  all  silences. 

They  thrill   to  the   clangor  of  old   days   when   they   flung  far  their 

challenge, 
Heralds  of  the  high  God  of  Spain  to  the  tribes  of  the  hills  and  high 

plains, 

Tolling  the  people  to  prayers  and  dead  masses  for  the  dying. 
Calling  brown  kinsfolk  to  weddings,  they  clapped  their  bronze  heels 

as  they  danced. 

They  live  at  the  summit  of  life  and  then  sank  to  quiescence. 
Time  has  left  them  alone  with  the  flowers  and  the  winds  and  the  sun 
To  whisper  back  to  the  birds,  and  ring  back  muted  centuries, 
When  the  snow  falls  softly  and  stirs  them,  or  a  butterfly  poises  on  a 
bell. 

Santa  Fe  12        20        18 


34 


THE  BUND  WOOD  CHOPPER 

Where  the  Acequia  Madre  glides  like  a  snake  below  the  road, 
In  the  shadow  of  a  low  adobe  stable  and  a  pile  of  logs  man-high, 
Big  and  brown,  rotting  and  charred,  with  ridges  of  snow  on  their 

spines, 
Backed  by  a  cone-shaped  foot-hill,  through  two  spider  fingered  trees; 

I  saw  a  shape  like  an  ape  in  stained  overalls, 

Crouching  low  at  the  end  of  a  cross  cut  saw  as  long  as  himself. 

He  leaned  on  it,  swaying  it  awkwardly,  playing  strange  music, 

With  the  rending  of  ore  from  rock  and  the  crash  of  falling  trees  in  it, 

Till  his  big  fiddle  bow  of  steel  had  swept  the  last  wet  cutting  away. 

He  laid  the  end  of  the  log  on  the  chip  packed  ground  like  a  headless 

idol. 

He  seemed  to  kneel  before  it  as  his  clean  axe  rose  and  fell, 
Its  keen  edge  always  in  line  with  a  line  through  the  middle  of  his 

head,  his  spine  and  his  hands. 
And  the  line  through  the  middle  of  each  round  and  half  and  quarter 

log  was  as  clean 
As  the  cleavage,  timed  and  exact,  of  close  set  machinery. 

When  he  had  finished  his  stint  he  felt  for  his  faggots  and  got  up 

with  them. 
He  went  on  over  the  water  with  one  foot  so  close  to  the  edge  oT 

the  bridge, 

Where  no  guard  rail  was,  that  I  wanted  to  call  out  to  him. 
Children  going  to  school  passed  him  and  followed  him, 
Making  no  more  of  him  than  the  snow  on  the  hills  or  the  mud  on  the 

road, 
Where  my  ape-man  at  last,  erect  and  assured,  was  rounding  the  turn 

of  the  road. 

Santa  F6  1        30        19 


35 


ARTURO 

He  wears  a  smeared  red  sweater. 

His  faded  blue  overalls  gape  at  the  knees. 

His  shoes  are  shaky. 

His  hat  is  dusty  and  black  and  half  holes. 

He  walks  into  our  kitchen  and  sniffs  at  it. 
He  walks  into  our  dining  room  and  looks  at  me. 
He  says  to  me,  "Hello,  hello,  you  bueno?" 
And  religiously  I  salute  him  in  turn, 
"Hello,  Arturo,  you  bueno?" 

His  eyes  are  big  and  black. 

His  lips  are  large  and  Latin. 

Hij  nose  is  large  and  fit  for  smelling  at 

Meals  his  sister,  Rosario,  makes  for  us. 

His  face  is  large  and  it  needs  to  be  washeu 

Monday,  Tuesday,  Wednesday, 

Thursday,  Friday,  Saturday. 

His  years  are  four  and  a  half. 

His  face  is  the  face  of  a  masterful  lover  of  living, 

Wise  without  knowing  it,  equal  to  everything, 

Slowly  alert  and  sufficient  to  time  and  itself. 

His  stare  is  the  stare  of  youngest  New  Mexico, 

Pondering  life  in  a  puddle  of  sunlight, 

Wondering  what  we  painters  and  poets  in  Canyon  Road  make  of  it, 

And  what  all  this  big  world  is  about. 

His  eyes  are  two  round  interrogation  points. 

His  voice  is  the  echo  of  an  older  wisdom. 

And  I  know  some  day  or  other, 

When  I  am  half  the  world  away  from  Santa  F6, 

In  some  land  of  the  Latins  where  life  is  a  matter  of  minutes  and 

seconds,  and  centuries, 
I  shall  see  and  hear  him. 

I  shall  have  him   coming,  standing,   pondering,   questioning, 
Like  a  lesser  Pan  and  a  faun  and  a  hybrid  of  pixies  and  cherubim; 
With  his  black  eyes  of  life,  and  his  small  voice  of  life  that  insists 

and  persists. 

I  am  sure  that  at  last  I  shall  answer  his  slow  repetition 
"Hello,  hello,  you  bueno,  you  bueno? 
Arturo". 

11  10         18 


36 


THE  YELLOW  K1VA 

There  is  a  sprawling  yellow  kiva  in  our  little  town, 

With  a  ground  plan  looking  like  a  great  lop-sided  H,   stenciled  by 

tribal  tradition. 
On  forty-eight  states,  here  and  there,  East  and  West,  in  ideographs 

crudely  inconclusive. 
Some  of  us  say  it  stands  for  hell  today;   some  have  a  hope  it  may 

mean  heaven. 

The   cliff   dwellers   may  have   known  better  when   they   made   their 

kiva  capitals: 

Round  ,!ow-rattered,  intimate,  with  room  for  a  hearth  fire  in  the  midst. 
We  have  tiled  our  larger  lodges  with  tainted  ballots,  talking  paper, 

dirty  green  backs,  louder  yellow  backs. 
Our  State  Capitol  puts  up  a  front;  and  falls  down,  when  you  look  at 

it  behind,  like  most  Americans. 

We  have  paid  too  much  paper  money  and  hard  money  for  wide  stair 

cases  and  long  and  lofty  corridors, 
Building  a  sounding  box  of  Babel  full   of  pigeon  holes   of  purpose 

weakly  standardized; 
Dusty  office  rooms  where  time  clock  type  writers  transcribe  quantity 

production;   we  have  made  the  place  a  mill 
For  little  shoddy  private  grafts,  and  public  grabs  of  a  state's  greater 

greediness. 

Boy  orators  orate  in  our  Senate  and  our  House;    paid  interpreters 

translate  through  two  languages, 
Latin  to  Nordic,  and  Nordic  to  Latin;   Spanish  and  English  mix  as 

they  can; 
Smelting  man,  and  metals  unmined;   tongues  of  smothered  fire  tire 

ears  unresigned 
To  the  endless  wasting  of  words  and  time  paid  for,  and  loose  power 

in  our  mountain  power  house. 

Sometimes  it  seems  the  old  kivas  were  better,  with  their  hearth-fires 

for  our  fevered  haste;   and  their  well-weighed  sentences, 
As  the  peace  pipe  passed,  of  wise  men  who  spoke,  pondering  their 

words,  face  to  face; 
Without  middlemen  or  scare  heads  to  exploit  or  distort  the  sense  of 

the  tribe  and  its  purpose  in  time. 
Sometimes  it  seems  God  Almighty's  prize  fools  are  those  wiseacres 

in  Washington  who  would  civilize  the  Indian. 

We  were  going  away,  and  looked  back  at  that  power  house  of  machine 
waste  planted  on  our  plateau. 

Over  it  floated,  faded  in  warm  sunlight,  the  flag  that  means  most  to  us, 
time-stained  and  rubber  stamped; 

Like  one  tattered  wing  of  freedom  we  must  fly  with;  somehow;  some 
where;  somehow  we  remembered 

The  old  kivas'  flag  tipped  ladders — till  man's  Ladder  lifted  there. 

Santa   Fe  4        29        21 


37 


THE  PARIS 

Paris  blazed  by  night,  bridging  San  Francisco  Street. 
Through  part  of  the  war  we  watched  it  and  worried  a  little. 
By  day  the  letters  paled  in  the  beauty  of  the  mountain  west  of  it. 
And  Paris  and  the  war  were  five  thousand  miles  away  from  us. 

We  had  not  thought  of  the  Paris  of  cow  punchers  and  counter  jumpers, 
Fanning  a  cayuse  through  forty  miles  of  moonlight,  and  wallowing 

desperately 
Out  of  gray  ruts  of  shop  aisle  and  street,  and  dreamless  staring  and 

sleeping, 
Or  of  the  Paris  of  the  old  who  have  been  there,  and  may  not  go  back. 

In  a  cold  cave  of  germs  where  ill-washed  people  coughed  and  flirted 
Once  we  saw  Olive  of  the  Studios  caught  in  a  great  gray  spider  web 
That  some  one  flashed  a  light  on,  and  she  shook  it  with  her  posturing, 
(Lake  live  bait  in  a  trap  to  tempt  other  girls  like  herself, 
And   a  mannequin   ghost   for   furs,   frocks   and   motors   they   framed 

her  in,) 

Never  to  emerge  from  the  net  of  quics  returns,  in  color  and  light, 
A  voice  that  sang  when  it  spoke,  and  a  warm  and  vibrant  reality, 
Truer  than  herself  and  the  startled  hearts  of  her  hearers. 

"It's   the  Easiest  Way  all  over  again",   said   Irene.     "Let's   get  out 

of  this". 
So  for  a  year  we   soaked   ourselves   in  the   sun   and   snow   on   the 

mountains. 
And  we  passed  the  Paris  at  times  with  eyebrows  lifted  and  slightly 

superior,  « 

We  who  knew  Paris  and  the  arts,  and  all  men  publish  about  them. 

Thanksgiving  night  Pershing's  Crusaders  compelled  us. 

And  something  rose  in  our  souls,  and  pushed  its  way  and  thudded 

Through  the  pulsing  hearts  of  the  rest  that  pushed  the  Huns  from 

Paris, 
With  shoulder  thrusts  at  spaded  earth,  and  beams   bridging  ruined 

rivers, 
That  rippled  in  a  tide  of  living  and  lifted  us. 

Suddenly  we  perceived  the  purpose  of  this  playhouse  of  starved  people, 
We  who  had  starved  for  the  great  free  swing  of  something  high  as 
the  stars; 


38 


People  who  strive  for  Paris  and  the  child  in  their  hearts  two  nights 

a  week; 
People  who  howl  at  custard  pies  slapped  in  your  face,  and  are  more 

avid  for  adventure, 
Even  for  farcial  and  thrilling  acrobatics,  than  the  vapidness  of  trade 

vampires, 
Thrilling   a    little    to    filmed    wickedness    of    underworlds    waked    in 

themselves  and  sickening  of  film  sentiment. 

We  saw  how  stark  contrast  of  light  and  shade  come  first   in  the 

ground  and  growth  of  things, 
Where  the  roots  of  the  soul  still  struggle  in  the  ruts  and  mud  of  the 

road, 
For  earth  had  eyes  before  ears,  and  howls  and  shrieks  before  cadenced 

voices  and  muted  imaginings, 

And  Centaurs,  Vikings,  Attilas  and  Punchinellos,  before  Paris;    and 

these  people 
Were  wiser  for  themselves  than  we  were  and  the  film  spiders  who 

sold  and  seduced  them. 

For  who  has  seen  save  by  flashes  at  sunrise  and  sunset,  the  color 

and  flowering  of  heaven? 
Or  heard  its  voices  yet  but  in  swift  and  staggering  action  of  cyclones 

and  thunder  storms? 

But  we  all  see  the  stars  at  night  on  a  screen  of  essential  reality. 
And  we  went  out  beneath  them,  and  planned  for  Paris  as  we  walked 

through  it. 

Santa  F6  12        3        18 


39 


HOTEL  DE  OLID 

We  have  called  it  a  bleak  old  barracks,  but  it  belongs  to  us. 

It  is  bright  enough  when  it  waits  for  the  midnight  train  from  Lamy, 

Gleaming  from  blackness  like  a  porter's  teeth  in  a  desert-bound 
Pullman, 

And  like  the  car  an  ante-room  to  kings  and  queens  that  travel  in 
cognito. 

Youth  lay  awake  here  all  night  devising  miracles, 

Love  slept  softly  at  last  the  happiest  night  of  its  honeymoon, 

Romance  marched  up  and  down  shadowy  corridors  marking  mountains 

by  moonlight. 
Adventure  stirred  to  a  sunrise,  and  death  the  great  adventurer  set 

spurs  at  twilight. 

History  wrote  new  pregnant  lines,  and  staged  strange  meetings  above 

stairs. 
Politics   played  queer  tricks   whenever  the   state   legislature   was   in 

session. 

Art  could  color  its  own,  and  science  came  seeking  fossil  wonderlands, 
And  keys  to  the  truth  of  life  that  lived  and  died  here  before  Columbus 

came  and  Coronado. 

And  the  common  people  came,  as  still  they  come  today, 
To  the  winning  of  the  West  and  the  magic  that  still  thrills  in  it. 
And  the  townsfolk  came  to  meet  their  friends  and  speed  their  parting, 
Where  once  they  danced  all  night,  and  nodded  to  eternal  after  dinner 
orators. 

We  have  come  from  the  dust  of  the  desert  and  wallowed  in  its  big 

white  bath  tubs, 
We  have  loafed  and  written  picture  post  cards,  and  scanned  Indian 

blankets  and  pottery. 

We  have  thrilled  to  news  of  war  and  peace,  and  idly  wondered 
Who  was  that  man  in  miner's  boots,  and  the  girl  with  a  face  like 

Faustina's  twin  sister. 

One  night  the  lobby  looked  like  a  bank  of  life  and  a  clearing  house. 

People  came  and  went,  and  put  tired  bodies  and  souls  in  deposit, 

To  withdraw  them  next  morning  or  three  days  later  from  vaults  of 

sleep  and  of  silence. 
Once  it   seemed   to  us   like   a  club  of  the   country  we   stood   in  on 

sufferance. 

Santa  F<§  12        IT        T8 


40 


THE  OLD  ADOBE 

A  brown  mud  box  some  one  dumped  by  the  side  of  the  street, 

It  stands  where  time  left  it  and  fancy  forgot  it, 

With  two  smeared  windows  that  squint  on  each  side 

Of  a  dark  and  toothless  door  and  a  doorstep  that  sags  like  a  lip. 

But  childrens'  eyes  look  out  of  its  windows  still. 
People  coming  and  going  are  a  daily  bread  to  it. 
And  the  breath  and  the  sound  of  life  still  comes  from  it, 
Where  two  old  women  in  dusty  black  stand  by  the  sagging  sill  and 
and  whisper  in  the  shadows. 

They  stand  in  the  shadow  of  the  past  and  smile  at  it. 
They  are  living  in  longing  and  memory  that  walks  with  it, 
Through  the  dear,  dead  days  that  are  gone,  now  dearer  than  ever. 
And  the  very  voice  and  soul  of  the  past  that  is  pain  and  prophesy, 
Stirs  the  dim  lips  that  slowly  part  and  smile  at  life  and  repeat: 
"Buenos  dias  Senor.  si,  buenos  dias  Senor." 

Santa  Fe  11        7        18 


41 


PENITENTES 

Ten  half  naked  men  are  marching, 

Like  boys  following  their  leader,  flogging  themselves, 

In  a  staggering  file  down  a  stony  trail  near  Taos. 

Their  yucca  scourges  drip  and  their  drawers  drip  red  on  the  stones. 

Their  brown  backs  are  raw  and  rutted  and  slowly  shuddering 

With  writhing  nests  of  red  snakes  that  feed  and  breed  on  them, 

Like  writhing  snakes  of  blood  in  brains  beating  to  bursting.  . 

Little  gray  snakes  of  pain  writhe  and  strike 

In  wild  brown  faces  set  and  distorted  like  masks 

Of  something  starker  than  bull-fights,  burnings  and  rackings, 

That  persist  and  insist  in  pain's  surgeons  and  Inquisitors. 

This  is  the  torture  of  self  linked  breath  by  breath,  stride  by  stride, 

stroke  by  stroke, 

Like  the  intimate  tearing  torture  of  lovers  begetting  birth  pangs, 
With  the  shuddering  torture  of  brothers  in  blood's  burning  sacrament. 

Their  women  follow,  and  shudder  or  thrill  to  them. 
Children  follow  and  whimper,  but  half  grown  boys  are  burning  to  begin. 
Mothers  look  on  and  loathe  it  and  women  unwedded  and  ripe, 
Fear  and  hate  a  greater  cruelty  than  women's  cruelty, 
And  a  redder  ritual  than  any  woman's  ritual, 
And  a  wilder  madness  than  any  woman's  madness, 
As  they  march  to  the  cross  that  stands  at  the  end  of  their  road  6f 
the  cross. 

There  for  a  moment  of  suffering  and  torment, 

Beside  men  and  boys  who  gash  themselves  with  cactus  and  writhe 

on  heaps  of  it, 
The  supreme  personage  in  this  drama  of  pain  that  is  older  than  all 

actors, 

Pain  and  the  will  to  pain  that  is  old  as  blood  is, 
Old  as  the  heart  of  life  that  stirs  and  beats  and  throbs  and  flogs 

in  men  and  women, 

Pulsing  through  their  lips  and  tongues,  and  breasts  and  fingertips, 
Through   their   maddest   emotions    and    passion's    pale   and   poignant 

intensities  of  tenderness: 
Christ's  old  prototype,  alive  and  adored  today,  Good  Friday,  in  his 

valley  by  Taos, 
Naked  and  ecstatic,  is  waiting  for  the  rest  of  them. 

Santa  Fe  2        27        18 


42 

SANTA  FE  FORENOON 

The  foothills  are  striped  with  long  shadows  of  little  pinyon  trees. 

They  are  brindled,  tufted,  sleek  and  rounded. 

And  they  seem  to  stretch  ever  so  little, 

Like  cats  half  asleep  in  the  sun — one  yawns  at  me. 

The  little  brown  adobe  houses  perched  between  their  paws, 

Love  them  and  cuddle  closer  to  the  earth  they  grow  from. 

The  road  to  the  canyon  rising  slowly  and  twisting, 

Lies  like  a  piece  of  tangled  fishing  line  they  have  tired  of  playing  with. 

A  lizard  in  the  sun  slides  past  with  a  flicker  of  his  tail, 
And  a  little  river  in  a  crease  of  the  hills  glides  by  as  silently. 
The  grease-wood  is  gray  again.    Its  yellow  flowers  have  faded 
To  the  tint  of  the  cottonwoods  faintly  turning  and  barely  swaying 
Above   gray   trunks   that   dusty   brown   and   tawny   bronchos   browse 
between. 

And  my  thoughts  are  yawning  thoughts  that  browse  with  them, 
Past  the  smell  of  ripening  apples  in  the  orchards  and  the  grease-wood 

by  the  wayside, 
Past  the  purple  lustre  of  cabbages  in  the  garden  where  our  red  hens 

are  hunting, 
Past  a  dark  green  tide  of  alfalfa  lapping  past  fence  post  after  fence 

post, 
Up  to  the  red  hillside  of  the  stone  crusher  where  the  picks  of  convicts 

flicker  on  the  skyline. 

On  the  brown  road  ruled  between  the  green  alfalfa  edge,  and  pinyon 

trees  that  tuft  the  ridge, 
Two  Mexican  women  in  thin  black  skirts  and  shawls  are  tracking 

to  town. 

And  behind  them  a  brown  boy  and  three  gray  burros, 
With  firewood  bound  round  backs  and  flanks  in  huge  brown  horse 

shoes  go  silently. 
And  the  whole  is  a  frieze  as  old  as  the  brown  and  umber  vases  of 

Mycenae  and  Corinth — and  older. 

There  is  a  patina  of  days  of  dust  and  slow  delight  on  this  pattern  of 

the  world  today. 
There  is  a  gray  glaze  like  the  glaze  of  olives  and  old  olive  trees  in 

Italy  on  this  brown  and  sun-burned  pottery, 
A  gray  glaze  and  patterning  of  shadow  on  walls  and  stones, 
On  garden  soil  and  roadside  and  hillside. 

And  higher  than  all,  and  harder  and  softer  in  day's  mirror 

There    burns    a    blue    flame,    cloudless    and    flawless,    stirless    and 

mellowing 
The  earth  and  all  that  grows  from  her,  the  yellow  apples  on  the  bough 

beside  me, 
And  a  million  aspens  turning  yellow  at  last  on  a  huge  round  shoulder 

toward  Truchas. 

And  a  mountain  that  I  love,  like  a  girl  half  waking, 
Thrusts  from  the  crumpled  folds  of  the  foot  hills'  spotted  coverlet, 
An  elbow  white  and  shning  as  the  snows  the  clouds  come  close  to, 
And  yawns — as  she  smiles — at  me  at  the  top  of  the  morning. 

Santa  Fe  19        13        18 


43 


THE  TOWER 

There  is  no  cloud  in  the  world  today. 
And  the  sky  is  blue  beyond  belief  or  desire, 
Blue  light  that  knows  no  shadow;   the  horses  stand  motionless 
High  in  the  middle  of  the  mountains,  on  the  top  of  the  tower  of  the 
world. 

Round  us  the  ranges  run  and  eddy  and  circle. 

Could  one  but  creep  past  the  last  and  peep  from  the  parapet 

Into  the  splendor  of  space  without  shadow  or  mist: 

One  might  see   stars   for  pebbles  around  the  rounded  rim,  and   the 

hollow  below  it 
Of  a  pool  of  clear  spring  water  with  his  own  soul  for  a  still  face  in  it. 

This  is  the  tower  of  Maya;  they  pitched  the  blue  sky  for  a  tent  on  it. 
And  round  the  parapet  sleeping  lie  the  last  shapes  of  illusion; 
Mountain   on   mountain   mixed   and   asleep   in   the   sun's   vast,   silent 

seraglio; 

Evereywhere  breasts  and  hips  of  women,  shoulders  and  flanks, 
Stirless,  strong  and   remote,  the   mothers   of  mothers   forgotten   and 

older 
Than  the  first  flower  that  bloomed  or  the  first  river  that  ran. 

One  could  see  sea  nymphs  there,  bathing  and  basking, 

Shapes  that  swim  in  the  light  and  float  on  blue  air  like  foam, 

On  the  verge  of  the  surf  of  the  ranges  where  the  great  earth  waves 

gather, 

Billow  and  come  like  combers  suddenly  frozen  and  fixed; 
Power  and  purpose  that  pulses  eternally,  shaped  and  reshaped. 

Here  the  Kindler  of  stars  colored  the  power  of  His  purpose, 

Drew  from  the  sea  its  depth  of  shadow  and  sunlight, 

Rippled  the  notes  of  Hs  song  that  soars  to  a  snow  peak  suddenly; 

Palls  to  a  valley  and  rests;  here  the  Forger  of  words 

Made  for  the  dumb  a  sign  till  the  fires  of  His  forging  were  finished, 

And  set  it  spaciously  forth  to  wait  and  bear  witness, 

Till  the  riders  awake  and  arrive  at  this  Vision  of  Maya's  tower. 

Santa  Fe  11  2        18 


44 


STILL  LIFE 

Cold  clear  dawn  on  a  world  that  wakes  from  huddled  sleep — 
A  wide  window  sill  lifted  twelve  inches  to  let  in  the  day, 
Six  feet  from  my  pillow  at  six;  white  sky,  shadow  cultures  below 
In  a  long  oblong  microscope  slide  that  daybreak  slowly  focuses. 

Static  imensities  emerge  through  the  long  blue  profile  of  the  main 

range, 

Sloping  slowly  to  the  right  in  a  sky  line  that  sings  and  cannot  cease. 
Blue  gray  valleys  of  shadow  and  snow  beyond  grow  more  beautiful. 
Below  the  low  brown  adobes  flatten  frosted  roofs  in  parallel  planes. 

Leafless  trees  stenciled  on  the  sky  line  lift  to  the  levels  of  a  massive 

of  mountain  tops, 
Forming  a  net  work  for  fancy  that  waits   for  birds   winging  back, 

singing  spring — 
Nests  growing  warm,  living  leaves  of  emerald  cells  netting  together  In 

new  blue  April  weather. 
Those  frozen  fringes  sway  ever  so  little,  as  a  little  cool  breeze  starts 

to  eddy  and  stir. 
One  black  bird,  drifting  down  dawn,  lights  on  a  bare  bough;  and  the 

sap  stirs  underneath. 

Santa   F6  4        16        21 


45 


STAR  SPRAY 

My  cot  is  set  in  the  midst  of  mountains  and  stars. 

The  mountains  are  dull  and  low  on  a  sky  line  flattened  by  starlight. 

The  stars  are  too  many  to  count  or  confute,  and  I  turn  from  them 

To  a  peach  tree,  half  stripped,  that  stands  in  the  center  of  our  orchard. 

Our  orchard  is  a  garden  of  dreams,  of  stars  tangled  in  fruit  trees. 
They  are  sheep  caught  in  thickets, 
They  are  apples  of  silver  that  shine, 
They  are  birds  that  have  homed  to  new  nestings. 

They  are  silver  ships  stranded  in  shadowy  bays  with  jungles  joining 
far  margins. 

Our  orchard  is  a  garden  of  truth,  and  star  spray  in  fruit  trees, 

Like  light  filtered  through  to  sea  slugs  on  sea  weeds  in  rock  pools 

where  the  surf  crashes  thundering. 
For  we  live  in  the  shadow  of  a  wave  of  all  life  that  curls  and  imperils 

and  impends. 
And  we  live  in  the  hollow  of  a  pulsing  of  being  that  is   breaking 

and  rending  us. 

And  jungles  and  sheep  folds,  passage  of  birds  and  landfalls  of  sailors 

are    all  crushed  together  and  constrained 
To  the  urge  of  an  impulse  that  throbs  overarching,  and  stresses  far 

forelands  of  night, 
Where  meteors  and  stars  are  the  froth  and  the  foam  of  a  comber  of 

midnight  that  menaces 

Earth  and  our  orchard  and  island  that  crumbles,  assailed 
By  the  crash  and  the  gride  of  the  drift  of  the  stars,  and  the  beat  of  the 

surf  of  all  being. 

Santa  Fe  147 


46 


WINTER  MIDNIGHT 

There  are  triptyches,  panels,  lunettes,  in  Holland,  Paris,  Italy; 
That  one  might  rent  for  a  million  or  more  for  a  life  time. 
But  I  could  give  them  all  if  some  painter  would  paint  me  perfectly 
All  that  I  see  these  moonlit  nights  from  my  tent's  east  gable, 
In  two  tall  triangles  my  leaning  tent  pole  parts  and  marries. 

It  is  all  silver  and  white,  gray  and  black  with  browns  in  it  like  half- 
charred  charcoal; 

The  tent  and  the  pole  and  the  stubble  of  the  field  in  the  foreground, 

The  stripped  fruit  trees  of  the  orchard  with  stars  stabbing  through 
them, 

The  white  wreaths  of  snow  that  climb  higher  and  farther  through  the 
foot  hills, 

And  a  lean  sky  line  climbing  past  thin  branches  to  a  star  poised 
near  a  peak  in  fathomless  grayness. 

It  is  all  silent,  cold  and  still. 
And  I  wake  and  dream  and  wake  to  it  again, 
Till  a  faint  gleam  of  gold  from  the  forecourt  of  morning 
Thrills  in  a  gray  adobe  window  to  the  right  of  me, 
And  flashes  and  beckons  to  the  sunrise, 
Waiting  and  welling  behind  that  slate  gray  eastern  range, 
Waiting  to  leak  and  to  flow  and  to  flood  and  to  pour  past  the  peaks 
and  the  passes. 

Santa  F6  11        22        18 


47 


WINTER  MORNING 

The  sky  is  as  gray  as  the  glass  of  the  studio  window, 
The  telephone  wires  are  thin  black  lines  against  it. 
The  trees  are  as  thin  and  gray  and  brown 
As  sea  weed  in  rock  pools  unstirred  by  one  ripple. 

The  'dobes  huddle  into  the  hillside, 

Lying  low  and  lean  like  a  hungry  dog  asleep  with  his  nose  to  the 

ground, 

A  spotted  dog  that  is  dirty  white  with  the  snow  that  still  falls  on  him. 
The  pinyons  are  almost  black  and  as  cold  as  the  rest  of  him. 

A  black  wagon  rolls  slowly  down  the  white  road  to  Santa  Fe, 
With  four  small  Mexicans  huddled  in  cloaks  and  the  driver's  hands 

clutching  like  claws. 
Two  dun  cows  and  a  brown  horse  browse  in  the  greasewood  by  the 

river 
Sucking   the   dry   dugs   of   earth,   and   their   throats    throb   with   the 

weight  of  her. 

A  yellow  dog  snuffs  out  a  cold  trail  through  the  greasewood, 

The  gray  greasewood  with  snow-white  flowers   that  bloomed  afresh 

this  morning. 
A  black  broncho  in  a  gray  blanket  with  a  trailing  lariat  runs  kicking 

and  bucking  to  the  river, 
Trying  to  buck  off  the  blanket  of  gray  silence  that  sinks  and  wraps 

the  world  today, 

Nine  blackbirds,  like  living  notes  escaped  from  the  scale  of  slim  bars 
Of  frost  rimed  telephone  wires,  are  darting  and  dancing 
Against  the  wide  gray  sky  and  the  high  white  hillside, 
Like  soaring  chords  of  a  song  that  leaps  and  lilts  and  persists: 
As  swinging,  singing  wings  beat  up  against  the  thin  and  slowly  sifted 
snowflakes. 

Santa  Fe  11         24         18 


48 


WINTER  NOON 

Gray  Leg  wound  on  and  up  in  a  snail  shell  spiral, 
Round  a  round  brown  hill  that  looked  to  me  like  a  sea  snail. 
He  dipped  down  through  a  high  arroyo  of  snow  and  red  rocks. 
He  slipped  on  the  cold  north  side  of  a  horse  shoe  ridge  that  rose, 
Like  a  giant  fossil  from  the  sea,  stranded  and  frozen  on  top  of  the 
foot  hills. 

He  found  an  old  trail  that  angled  faintly. 

And  he  sawed  back  and  forth  and  he  jerked  on  and  up, 

Past  little  red  rocks  and  little  green  trees  and  white  patches  of  snow, 

With  his  brown  sides  heaving  and  his  heart  beating  between  my  legs 

when  we  halted. 
We  started  again  and  we  mounted  past  the  last  brown  bulge  of  the 

ground. 
And  I  swung  him  around  to  the  west  at  last,  and  we  watched  all 

time  together. 

We  stood  on  the  scarp  of  the  world,  and  below  us 

A  wide   brown   beach   spread   past   red    buttes    like   rocks    tumbling 

seaward. 
Below  on  upland  levels  toward  Bernalillo  the   snow  lay  white   and 

shining, 

Like  sea  sand  wet  by  tides  and  sea  ice  thrusting  landward 
Past  snow-capped  rocks  that  were  the  peaks  of  farther  ranges. 
And  the   sun  blazed  out  on   it  in  golden  channels  like   fiery  water 

flowing  and  rending  the  floe  pack. 
Beyond  lay  the  lights  and  shadows  and  snow  berg  summits  of  still 

greater  ranges. 

And  the  sun  rose  higher  and  higher. 

And  the  tide  of  life  like  liquid  fire  was  widening, 

As  the  tide  of  white  before  it  rose  and  widened, 

Rose  from  the  sea  and  spread  and  fell  in  air  waves  whose  fringes 

were  snow  flakes. 

The  sun  at  noon  blazed  down  on  a  snow  fringed  rock  pool 
That  the  sea  once  made;  and  the  waves  of  a  greater  sea 
That  washed  the  whole  world  like  an  island  when  time  was  a  babe 

in  its  womb, 

And  the  glaciers  were  the  scouring  of  the  long  slow  surf  in  it. 
And  the  ocean  today  is  the  dregs  and  blue  ooze  of  it. 


49 


The  clear  air  freshened  around  us, 

And  played  with  Gray  Leg's  mane  and  our  nostrils  widened. 

My  eyes  widened  and  my  thought  grew  greater  at  the  se^e  and  the 

thought  of  it 
As  the  world  grew  wider,  and  the     air  grew  wider,  and  life  grew 

greater  interminably, 
Till  all  the  sea  was  one  rock  pool; 

And  main  ranges  low  rock  ridges  of  New  Mexico  under  the  sea, 
That  plainsmen  blindly  believed  long  since  had  deserted  us; 
The  sea  that  was  here,  and  is  here,  and  will  be 
When  earth  like  a  wave-washed  rock  topples  down  to  be  ground  round 

to  atoms. 

And  I  saw  the  sun  in  the  sky,  and  I  saw  new  clouds  in  blue  water, 
Little  light  flecks  of  foam,  each  slight  and  white  as  a  snow  flake. 

And  I  knew  that  this  snow  was  the  froth  of  one  wave  in  an  eddy's 

little  tumult  of  air. 
And  I  breathed  in  one  breath  and  one  drop  of  a  wave  wide  as  ocean 

and  wider, 

That  lifts  to  the  light  of  the  sun,  and  ebbs  to  the  deepest  pits  of  night, 
And  knows  neither  tide  marks  nor  margin  beside  or  beyond  them; 
That  leaves  our  gray  mountains  like  tangled  tide  ridges  of  sand, 
For  a  day  on  the  way  of  all  living,  on  the  quest  and  unrest  of  the  sea 

born  slow  spirit  of  man. 

Santa  Fe  12         10         18 


50 


THE  RIDE  HOME 

We  rode  home  last  night  by  the  river. 

Turning  to  the  right  at  the  iron  bridge  with  its  frost  rimed  planks, 

We  galloped  by  high  banks  till  your  flying  shadow  was  lost 

In  the  matted  shade  of  leafless  ranks  of  willows. 

And  I  watched  you  bend  and  sway  as  Gray  Leg  threaded  through  them. 

We  forded  narrow  channels  where  cold  water  gleamed  and  wavered 
Through  a  waste  of  sand  and  scrub  where  your  shadow  toiled  like  the 

feet  of  the  horses, 

Through  shapeless  pools  of  dusk  as  cool  and  dry  and  shifting  as  sand, 
Where  the  shadows  of  the  rocks  were  painted  on  white  ice  rims  and 

snow  islands, 
On  the  edge  of  a  grease-wood  pasture:    and  once  more  the  willows 

swallowed  us. 

We  emerged  in  the  middle  of  a  valley  that  widened  and  climbed, 
Rising  softly  to  meet  the  mountains  as  your  breast  sometimes  breathes 

to  them. 

And  the  moon  was  an  open  well  head  with  all  the  silver  in  heaven 
Spilling  straight  down  on  your  spurs  and  the  bits  of  your  bridle, 
Rippling  away  with  the  wash  of  the  river,  and  the  starlight  leaked 

through  it. 

I  let  you  ride  before  me:     I  wanted  to  watch  you. 

With  your  slim  .straight  back  and  shoulders,  boylike  and  beautiful 

As  your  body  that  gripped  your  horse  and  silently  swayed  him; 

So  your  spirit  sways  your  heart;  you  rode  and  you  never  looked  back. 

And  I  followed  your  shadow  that  followed  you,  and  loved  it. 

Through  a  corridor  of  mountains  that  opened  on  the  stars 
We  rode  without  speaking  a  word  and  all  the  while  we  were  drinking  in 
The  silver  flood  of  moonlight  that  made  the  night  a  miracle. 
And  I  wanted  to  go  straight  on  and  follow  you 
Riding  forever  through  space  to  the  rim  of  the  range  and  beyond. 
There  in  the  air  was  our  empire,  and  there  we  went  riding, 
Riding  on  the  moonlight  rim  of  a  planet  that  galloped  through  the 
night. 

Santa  F<§  11        18        18 


51 


RITO  DEL  FRIJOLES 

The  Spaniards  called  it  Pajarito  because  they  saw  ther 
Greater  colonies   of  swallows'  nests  in  taller  mud  banks, 
Where  caves  star  the  cliffs  and  the  canyons  run  to  the  river. 
But  something  stronger  and  stranger  lingers  here  like  an  echo, 
Like  the  sound  of  dry  waters  that  run  below  these  last  year's  nests 
of  stone. 

The  winds  first  sang  here,  dancing  on  rock  pools  and  dizzy  ledges. 
They  ground  grit  in  rock  crevices  in  airy  whirlpools. 
The  caves  grew  and  remained  till  men  found  and  fashioned  them. 
There  was  a  sound  of  chipping  of  stone  on  stone,  and  of  fragments 

falling. 

There  was  a  sound  of  felling  of  trees  with  stone  axes. 
There  was  a  hoisting  of  vigas  home  and  a  building  of  balconies. 

The  women  ground  blue  corn  in  querns  and  sang  to  the  grinding. 
They  mado  sandals  of  cactus  fibre  and  wove  baskets  of  reeds  and 

grasses. 

The  hunters  brought  deer  meat  home  and  the  old  men  dried  it. 
Boys  stoned  rabbits,  girls  made  warm  robes  from  furry  skins  sewed 

fast  with  sinews. 
Men  found  eagles'  feathers  that  they  traded  for  turquoise  and  obsidian 

for  arrow  heads. 
They  made  their  first  black  pots  from  snakes  of  clay  coiled  outward 

and  upwards. 
They  harnessed  the  river  with  trenches,  they  stabbed  the  earth  and 

pitted  it  with  seed  corn. 

They  made  ladders  of  tree  trunks  that  leaned  and  led  to  their  great 

high  cave  of  ceremony, 

With  its  rock  half  dome  that  shadowed  the  stone  kiva  they  built  there, 
Round  and  barely  above  ground  like  a  bird's  nest  till  they  covered  it. 
Lest  any  should  lightly  see  their  threshold  to  the  underworld, 
Sunk  in  the  center  of  the  floor,  that  spirits  like  serpents  come  crawling 

through. 

They  were  primitive  people,  closer  than  today  to  their  origins. 
Their  racial  memories  reached  to  days  when  the  first  birds  were  flyiflg 

snakes  with  scales,  and  men  fought  them  with  flints  and  sling 

stones. 


52 


They  pictured  birds  on  their  pottery,  they  carved  them  on  rocks  and 

cliffs  in  petroglyphs. 

They  saw  serpents  in  the  windings  of  rivers  and  the  twistings  of  trails. 
The  Avanyu,  the  great  winged  serpent,  was  the  guardian  of  all  springs 

and  water  sources. 
When  he  was  angered  they  dried  and  men  died,  and  his  ways  were 

past  determining. 
They  worshiped  the  eagles  that  fed  on  serpents  before  the  Aztecs, 

their  fathers,  revered  them. 

They  were  a  bird-like  people  who  fled  from  the  tribes  of  the  plains 
of  torment. 

But  steel  and  powder  flew  faster,  and  the  swift  horses  of  the  Spaniards 
rode  at  them. 

On  them  Apaches  and  Navahoes  who  had  crawled  like  serpents  stalk 
ing  them,  were  winds  to  winnow  them. 

They  cut  the  trails  to  the  fields,  and  the  water  trails  and  the  hunting 
trails. 

Meanwhile  the  Avanyu  was  angered,  and  the  water  died  and  the 
people  died. 

For  they  had  no  wings  like  the  birds  who  flew  to  new  nests  and, 
full  drinking  pools. 

The  sky  was  blue  above  them,  cloudless,  rainless,  merciless. 

The  rocks  were  as  hard  as  before  and  as  gray  with  no  help  or  hope 

in  them, 

The  sun  was  bright  as  before,  and  it  burned  and  tortured  them. 
The  snow  was  white  when  it  fell  like  one  breath  of  cool  air  on  the 

fire  of  their  fever  and  hunger. 
The  wind  was  as  free  as  before  on  wild  nights  when  it  hooted  and 

yelled  at  them. 
The  birds  were  free  as  before,  their  song  was  as  sweet  as  before  and 

rarer  and  dearer. 
And  the  last  lovers  clasped  lean  hands  and  lips,  and  the  last  old  women 

wailed  for  the  last  child  of  the  tribe  and  the  ending  of  all  things. 
The  last  water  went  with  the  last  echo  of  its  falling,  the  last  fire  fell 

with  the  last  eyes  that  looked  at  it. 

And  the  serpents  of  shadow  silently  stole  into  the  place  and  pos 
sessed  it; 
Till  the  white  man  came  at  last  and  cleared  out  drift-filled  caves,  and 

filled  the  empty  city  with  his  dreams  of  it. 

Santa  F6  11        2        18 


53 


CORN  DANCE,  SAN  DOMINGO 

Motors  are  planted  in  ranks  in  gray  dust  by  a  dusty  gray  church. 
Motors  are  plowing  the  roads  from  Santa  Fe  to  Bernalillo. 
Horses  are  dancing  along  the  dusty  roads  through  the  sand  hills, 
Indians  on  sorrel  and  paint  ponies  come  trotting  down  distant  trails. 
Mexican  teams  and  toy  burros  are  pushing  through  the  crowd  on  foot 
to  the  Fiesta. 

Mass  is  still  being  sung;  through  the  open  door  one  discerns 
Shadowy  worshippers  kneeling  and  rising  in  ranks  to  slow  chanting. 
Mexicans  set  up  shop  in  stands,  south  of  the  Plaza  and  sell 
Candy,  quirts,  cigarettes,  soap,  Navajo  bracelets  and  rings  and  raw 

turquoise. 
Indian  women  in  dim  doorways  lift  mottled  pottery  and  toy  bows 

and  arrows. 
Children  bring  firewood  and  apples,  and  smoke  rises  fast  from  gay 

chimney  pots. 

In  the  great  square  of  South  and  North,  of  the  summer  and  winter 

peoples, 
The  crowd  is  gathering  and  black  heads  are  showing  in  hatchway's 

of  kivas, 

Like  huge  butt  ends  of  logs  protruding  from  earth  and  coated  with  it. 
Ladder  ends  slant  from  low  tops  with  red  feathered  pennants  at  their 

tips. 

The  church  disgorges  at  last  a  crowd  chromatic  and  intense. 
More  and  more  heads  of  dancers  are  massed  on  kiva  tops,  looking 

around. 
Past  the  throng  on  the  ground  to  strangers  and  friends  crowning  long 

roofs  and  crowding  strong  ladders. 

Domingo's  Koshare  appear  like  old  heralds  of  tribal  tradition. 
Green  corn  sheaves  bound  round  their  ears,  black  spots  daubed  on 

white  bodies. 
North,  South,  East  and  West  they  start  to  report  the  land  is  safe  for 

the  harvest. 

One  by  one  they  return  to  begin  the  abundant  fun  of  full  harvest, 
When  old  gray  grandsires   frisk  and  grin,   and   each  bin  is   full   of 

speckled  blue  ears; 
And  good  spirits  have  smiled  on  the  harvest. 


54 


Three  hundred  men  and  women  begin  to  dance  the  great  dance  of 

the  harvest. 
They  come  pair  by  pair  in  line  like  planted  corn  and  they  hold  green 

sprigs  of  pine. 

And  the  rattle  of  elk  teeth  rattles  and  silvery  sleigh  bells  simulates, 
The  cackle  of  the  pregnant  corn  in  great  heat,  and  the  swish  of  winds 

like  the  swish  of  flames  through  corn  fields. 
The  women's  black  blankets  are  earth,  and  the  long  tassels  of  the 

men's  trailing  waist  scarves 
Are  trailing  tassels  of  corn  that  is  born  of  the  heat  of  the  harvest. 

They  shuffle  like  the  first  slow  days  of  faint  green  growth  of  the 

harvest. 
They  circle   and   eddy  as   the   suns   and   shadows   of   green   growing 

circle  and  eddy; 
They  stamp  with  furred  feet  and  claws  of  wild  things  that  crept  and 

ran  through  the  ranks  of  the  harvest. 
They  tramp  with  the  dull  weight  of  days  that  bore  down  hour  by 

hour  in  great  heat. 
And  always  the  turpuoise  green  tablitas,  tall  woolen  tiaras   of  the 

dancing  women, 
Are   the   blue   green   tips   of   growing   corn,   and    swaying   flickering 

spear  heads  of  harvest. 

They  halt  like  the  sultry  heat  of  high  noon  in  mid  summer, 

When  the  corn  grows  high  though  all  earth  is  still,  and  stands  still 

as  it  grows ; 

Till  a  wave  of  slow  chanting  and  clamor  of  long  drums  stirs  them  again 
As  low  thunder  stirs  a  sultry  sky,  and  low  drumming  of  rain  comes 

closer  and  closer, 
To  hearts  that  beat  high  in  July  growing  glad  in  the  hope  of  the 

harvest. 

All  day  they  advance  and  retreat  through  the  heat  of  the  dance  of 

the  harvest: 
Till  the  last  motor  rolls  away,  the  last  cowboy  rides  away,  and  the 

Mexican  and  Navajo  riders, 
Like  a  painted  frieze  that  flamed  above  the  horses'  heads,  and  the 

dancers'  tablitas, 
Are   scattered   like   colors   of   sunset;    and   the   Plaza   lies   shadowed 

and  dun: 

And  the  last  old  Indian  woman  lets  down  her  rusty  sun  umbrella, 
And  lets  herself  heavily  down  a  long  and  dusty  ladder, 
To  the  feasting  already  begun,  in  glad  homes  of  corn  harvesting. 

Santa   Fe  12         1        15 


55 


THE  HERITAGE 

She  wanted  to  go  to  a  hut  hospital  on  the  western  front. 
Because  she  got  sick  herself  they  would  not  let  her. 
Then  came  the  influenza,  and  in  the  midst  of  it 
She  found  a  western  front  of  her  own,  right  here  at  home, 
Somewhere  in  northern  New  Mexico. 

Some  of  us  know  New  Mexico  as  a  land  of  beauty, 
A  land  of  color,  of  romance,  of  mountains  and  mystery, 
A  place  for  hunting,  fishing,  riding,  climbing  and  motoring; 
A  land  of  prehistoric  ruins  and  ruins  since  the  Spaniards  came, 
Of  cliff  dwellings,  terraced  houses,  Pueblo  dances  and  dim  rituals; 
A  land  of  rattlesnakes  and  sage  brush  and  red  and  black  traditions, 
Of  grim  Penitentes  who  scourge  and  crucify  themselves  afresh  on  each 
Good  Friday. 

Few  of  us  know  New  Mexico  as  a  land  of  squalor  and  gray  ignorance, 
Of  hidden  villages  and  lone  adobes  where  life  is  hard  as  it  was  in  the 

ages  of  flint  and  of  bronze, 

Of  little  efforts  to  live  as  pitiful  as  winter  starved  horses 
Wandering  through  spring  time,  staggering  and  dying 
In  the  running  of  new  waters  and  the  blossoming  of  fruit  trees, 
In  the  blue  of  April's  beauty  and  her  showers  of  pink  and  white. 

But  she  knew  them  because  they  belonged  to  her; 
Hard  by  the  valley  of  beauty,  around  the  bend  in  the  road, 
In  the  shadows  of  low  foot  hills  in  the  windings  of  little  rivers, 
In  the  sands  of  parched  arroyos  and  dry  ditches  where  the  sickness 
lay  heavy  on  the  land. 

Little  pitiful  stories  came  to  her  by  word  of  mouth, 

Of  dead  and  dying  mothers  and  babies  starving  and  neglected, 

Of  infected  houses  and  infected  wounds,  and  sores  that  spread  as  the 

sickness  spread, 
And  because  she  cured  one,  and  word  of  it  spread,  they  sent  for  her 

and  trusted  her; 
People  who  never  know  a  doctor  from  birth  to  death,  because  there 

are  no  doctors  to  seek  them  out  and  succor  them; 
People  who  live  and  die  as  the  beasts  die, 
People  who  yet  are  human  and  remember  her  and  love  her. 


56 


She  went  with  her  mother  and  her  little  brown  horse  and  mountain 

wagon, 
And  her  big  knitting  bag  full  of  bandages  and  pads,  lysol  and  aspirin 

and  little  bottles  and  tubes. 
She  went  with  a  white  mask  soaked  in  alcohol,  and  a  love  that  was 

her  whiter  disinfectant. 
And  they  could  not  see  her  face  clearly,  but  they  knew  the  light  m 

her  eyes. 
And  they  felt  the  healing  in  her  hands  in  the  shadows  of  dark  houses 

and  adored  her. 

She  went  by  day  and  night,  in  the  magic  of  the  moonlight  on  the 

mountains, 
Through  the   splendor  of  blue   days,  and   golden   sunlight  glad   and 

dear  as  the  warm  breath  of  life  itself. 
Through  a  mountain  world,  and  a  warm  mould  of  beauty  that  was 

made  for  beauty  and  belonged  to  her, 
Through  a  moonlit  world  of  cooler,  tenderer  shadows  of  the  truth 

that  beauty  barely  breathes  and  promises. 
And  from  it  all  she  took  them  something  lasting  in  herself  that  they 

believed  in  and  remember, 
Part  of  her  heritage  and  theirs  that  life's  true  lovers  share  in  shadowed 

sacraments  in  France  and  somewhere  on  life's  lonliest  firing  line. 
This  is  the  only  real  religion  in  the  world  that  men  and  women  live 

and  love  and  die  by  and  remember. 

Santa  Fe  11        12        18 


57 


THE  TRAIL  MENDER 

We  came  back  from  the  summit  where  snow  rifts  in  August. 

We  scraped  past  rock  stairs,  we  slithered  over  shale  slopes. 

We  thrashed  through   aspen   thickets   where   the  horses   nipped   dry 

grasses. 
We  stroked  down  the  spine  of  a  ridge  and  stopped  to  tighten  cinches. 

We  slid  down  guttered  channels  where  the  trail  angled  sharply, 
And   twisted   and   snarled   through   great   gnarled   roots   that  held   it 

clinging 
To  the  sides  of  a  funnel  in  the  hills;   we  plunged  down  shuddering1 

sand  slopes, 
Till  Puye  stretched  his  steaming  neck  to  the  gleam  of  a  stream  in 

a  canyon. 

Here  there  was  quiet  stirred  alone  by  the  splash  of  water  that  rippled 
From   rock   pool   to  rock  pool;    from   shade   pool   to   shade   pool   we 

threaded, 

Where  the  cotton  woods  stand  in  gray  islands  in  seas  of  green  grasses. 
And  the  trail  wound  brown  between  them,  shining  and  warm  in  ttte 

sun. 

Near  a  six-inch  ditch  that  brings  living  water  from  the  Rito 

Round  a  harsh  hill  shoulder  evenly,  we  saw  a  lunger  at  work. 

Slowly  he  stooped,  and  with  infinite  care  he  pried  and  he  lifted  at 

A  little  dry  pine  tree  wind-cast  across  the  trail  in  the  night. 

We  were  past  before  he  had  levered  it  down  hill  to  suit  him. 

I  looked  back  and  saw  him  picking  up  stones  and  trimming  trailing 

branches 

That  slap  one  straight  in  the  eyes,  and  stooping  again  and  again. 
And  every  line  of  his  tired  body  was  a  line  of  life's  gospel  telling  me: 

"Others  may  tread  the  high  trails,  taking  earth  by  the  throat  on  the 

way. 

They  may  breathe  in  half  the  sky  at  one  stride  but  I  cannot. 
They  may  seize  the  summits  in  turn  like  posts  boys  vault  past  at 

leap-frog, 
And  watch  all  the  wonder  of  the  world  suddenly  spread  at  their  feet, 

but  I  may  not. 

Others  scrape  hand  holds  to  see  lightnings  splintered  on  lone  summits, 

Or  feel  the  flail  of  hail  and  sleet  on  razor-edged  ridges;   but  I 

Am  grateful  that  life  lets  me  live  by  great  trees  and  green  glades  and 

bright  waters, 
Smoothing  the  way  for  the  weak,  and  the  strong  that  stumble  and 

trip  in  the  night." 

On  the  trail  we  all  are  keepers  of. 

Santa  Fe  12        10        18 


58 


GOATS 

White,  gray,  brown,  black,  the  goats  track  by  together, 

Blending  over  and  flowing  around  baby  arroyos  and  humps  in  the 

hills, 
Like  a  brindled  patch  on  the  hide  and  the  play  of  lean  muscles  on 

the  back 
Of  a  sharp-nosed  dog  that  pens  them  in  the  open  persistently. 

They  browse  by  old  trails  and  the  strength  of  the  earth  flows  into 

them. 

The  blue  sky,  the  brown  hills  and  the  gray  weeds  are  one  with  them. 
The  she-goats  chew  their  food  and  the  sagging  udders  are  filled, 
And  the  dog  and  his  master  are  drift  on  the  weight  of  the  wave  that 

moves  with  them. 

It  ripples  through  worn  channels  and  runnels  in  the  hills. 
And  the  tide  turns  back  at  twilight  and  the  goats  go  home  again, 
With  white  milk  for  brown  babieis,  white  sunlight  liquid  and  warm. 
And  the  strength  that  they  strained  out  of  chinks  in  the  rocks  is 

strained  again 
Into  little,  glad,  greedy  lips  that  lap,  till  the  lips  of  brown  mothers 

drink  love  deeply. 

Santa   Fe  11     11        18 


59 


COYOTE 

He  howls  in  the  hunger  of  winter, 

Where  a  starved  moon  sinks  into  nothingness, 

Near  an  earth  scabbed  with  shadow  and  leprous 

With  livid  patches  of  silver  along  her  thin  shoulders  and  flanks. 

He  howls  as  a  leper  howls 

When  health  and  wholeness  and  human  touch  are  taken  from  him. 

He  howls  as  evil  men  must  howl  in  evil  dreams, 

Seeing  lost  happiness  they  maimed  and  murdered. 

He  howls  as  a  blind  man  howls  when  his  eyes  are  put  out. 

He  howls  as  madmen  howl  at  shifting  shapes  that  trick  and  betray 

them. 
He  howls  as  devils  howl  when  Hell  damns  the  innocent. 

He  howls  when  the  earth  is  sick  and  mad  in  wan  winter  moonlight, 

When  ghosts  walk  thick,  and  wake  and  stir  at  the  sound 

Of  his  long,  laughing,  wailing  mocking,  yelling  ululations. 

He  howls  like  a  leper,  a  devil,  a  dead  man,  a  blind  man,  a  bad  man, 

a  mad  man. 
He  howls  with  the  wailing  of  the  winds  and  low  laughter  of  snoV 

trolls  that  rick  men  to  murder  them. 

Santa  Fe  12         8         18 


60 


PROCESSIONAL 

Coming  down  hill  from  Casa  Pintada,  past  the  Acequia  Madre, 
Suddenly  appeared  at  the  end  of  the  street  plodding  down  Canyon 

Road, 
Five  little  white  brides  of  Mary  in  procession,  two  women  in  black 

walked  behind  them; 
Five  little  girls  bearing  flowers  in  glass  vases,  and  two  women  with 

yellow  candles  in  their  hands. 

Carrying  candles  in  white  and  red  bouquets,  candles  unlit  the  shade 

of  pale  gold; 
Going  in  golden   sunlight  to  the   great  church   of  St.   Francis,   they 

went  down  through  brown  dust,  through  the  mothers'  month  of 

May 

To  the  motherhood  of  Mary,  of  our  Lady  of  Love  who  smiles  mildly 
On  all  mothers   and   girls   who  go  to  her,  and  those   others  whose 

smiles  is  spring. 

Santa   Fe  5        4        21 


61 


THE  DIMPLE 

I  have  learned  to  love  this  land, 

As  one  loves  the  body  of  a  woman  one  begins  to  possess, 
And  the  clouds  in  the  skies  that  change  and  make  her  subtle  afld 
wonderful. 

I  love  the  swells  and  the  troughs  like  the  sea  of  her  sky  line, 

The  sudden  hollows  and  circling  eddies   of  earth  lying  sunken   and 

shadowed 
By  the  crest  of  the  ranges. 

One  day  I  found  a  dimple  in  the  earth  with  flowers  that  thrilled  in  it, 
Behind  a  hill  that  hid  it  like  yesterday's  dear  secret 
And  I  made  it  a  shadowy,  dreamy  funnel  of  delight  and  of  peace  that 
poured  into  me. 

Why  should  people  think  it  any  more  shameful  to  love 

The  dimples  in  a  woman's  body,  behind  her  knees,  below  her  shoulders, 

And  in  every  fair  and  fertile  fold  of  her; 

Than  those  in  her  cheeks  and  her  chin? 

Santa   Fe  3        4        17 


62 


THE  SPRING 

The  springs  are  hard  to  find 
In  this  old  brown  land  of  ours. 

But  I  know  one  that  I  found  one  day  in  November, 
High  on  the  breast  of  a  hill 
Heaving  out  of  canyon, 

Like  the  heaving  breast  of  the  girl  that  climbed  that  trail  with  me, 
Till  we  fell  on  our  faces  side  by  side  and  kissed  the  still  water  to 
gether. 

There  were  grains  of  brown  sand  in  the  still  round  basin, 

Cool  and  blue  as  the  skies  and  her  eyes  with  brown  flecks  in  them, 

Looking  out  on  a  widening  vista  of  space  and  of  splendor, 

And  a  riot  of  red  and  gold,  aspens  and  oak  scrub  that  climbed  to  us; 

All  the  leaves  of  the  year  burning  up  for  us, 

To  warm  our  Indian  summer, 

As  all  the  year's  waters  were  strained 

To  make  that  cup  cool  for  us. 

If  I  could  find  that  spring  again, 

And  see  her  face  again, 

Grave  and  glowing  and  good  for  me 

As  the  taste  of  that  water  was  good  for  me, 

And  feel  the  clasp  of  her  hand 

As  we  climbed  the  rocks  to  the  summit  of  the  range; 

I  could  go  back  with  her  again 

To  the  days  of  life's  beginning 

When  we  lay  with  our  lips  at  the  breast  of  the  mother  of  all, 

Guiltless  of  sinning  or  sorrow  or  desire, 

And  happy  as  children  are  happy. 

Santa  Fe  11        20        18 


63 


LOST  LAKE 

Two  snow  peaks  looked  down  on  it  over  their  shoulders, 

As  it  lay  in  a  green  pit  below  them. 

And  it  smiled  for  one  hour  each  day 

When  the  sun  stooped  straight  down  and  kissed  it. 

More  still  and  cool  than  cloistered  nuns  and  novices, 
It  lay  in  the  shade     of  the  pine  trees  and  mirrored  stars  more  con 
stantly 

Than  any  lake  in  the  world,  and  the  shadows  guarded  it. 
Many  have  fought  to  find  it  and  failed  for  a  lifetime. 

One  I  caught,  looking  down  from  my  tallest  snow  peak's  shoulder, 
The  gleam  of  its  water  at  noon,  and  I  left  all  the  world  at  my  feet. 
And  I  went  crashing  down,  thrashing  down,  through  shale  and  aspens 

and  pines 
Straight  to  the  mark  that  I  missed;   and  must  climb  to  discover  it 

again. 

Once  in  the  eyes  of  a  child  that  was  a  woman  for  a  moment, 
As  the  sun  warmed  her  and  waked  old  and  strange  pregnant  appeals, 
I  caught  a  light  like  the  smile  of  Lost  Lake,  and  I  lost  it 
When  her  heart  that  was  hardly  awake,  lay  asleep  in  the  shadows 
again. 

Santa  F*  12        11        18 


64 


TESUQUE  CHURCH 

A  blue  square  of  sky  with  two  bells  in  it 

Is  fretted  in  the  wedge  of  a  lean  white-washed  gable. 

Below  through  a  great  gray  square  of  shadow 

A  woman  in  a  pale  blue  blanket  leans  and  looks  out  of  the  door. 

Beyond  and  above  the  flat  white  facade  is  blueness  illimitable. 
And    the    great    black   and    white    bulk    of    the    main    range    builds 

toward  it. 
And  the  high  white  dome  of  Baldy,  rounded  and  fuller  than  Fuji's 

high  note  of  ecstasy, 
Swells  to  the  greater  dome  of  the  sky's  blue  beauty  forever  and  ever. 

Below  on  the  steps  of  the  church  a  row  of  Indian  women  and 
children, 

Two,  doll-like,  Japanese,  red  and  remote,  with  eyes  obliquely  ob 
livious, 

One  in  a  purple  shawl  with  a  face  like  a  fate  intent  and  terrible; 

All  with  hard  heavy  black  bangs  falling  low  down  brown  foreheads 
are  watching  the  dancing. 

Santa  Fe  12        27        18 


65 


TEN  CANDLES 

Before  the  gold  and  white  altar  in  our  old  cathedral  aisle, 

Before  the  painted  statue  of  Christ  with  a  burning  heart  and  a  scarlet 

robe, 
Before    "they   brought   him   to   the    temple"    lettered   in   lace    below 

wounded  feet, 
Before  two  tall  yellow  candles  unlit  in  brass  candlesticks'  yellower 

columns  : 

In   a   brass   skeleton   lectern   rack,   with   tiers   of   round   and   empty 

sockets 
Slanting  up  toward  Christ,  ten  candles  are  lighted  out  of  seven  and 

thirty : 
Ten   small  white  and   gold  ardent  altar  flames,   burning  softly   and 

steadily. 
One  is  so  near  the  end  of  its  mission  that  the  flame  is  taller  than 

the  whiteness   that  remains. 

Underneath,  the  bottom  of  the  rack  looks  like  the  floor  of  a  bird  cage. 
Here  is  a  no-man's  land  of  dead  candles,  candles  time  has  done  with, 

charred  and  guttered  out 
In  the  fever  of  a  worship  of  wounds  that  burns  before  him,  waiting 

for  his  Judgment  Day; 
All  the  blood  from  the  pale  face  of  the  girl  who  kneels  here  drained 

away  to  redden  the  burning  heart  and  the  scarlet  robe  of  Christ. 

Santa  F£  4        3        21 


THE  CABIN 

The  cabin  has  yellow  log  walls  and  a  front  porch  with  a  hammock  in  it, 

And  a  great  gray  stone  fire-place  built  into  the  side  hill  at  the  back. 

There  are  two  big  beds  by  the  fire;  and  two  long  low  windows  be 
side  them 

Look  up  and  down  the  valley  of  a  river  that  slips  through  the  arms 
of  the  hills. 

There  is  a  row  of  books  on  the  mantel  that  I  made  there. 

A  row  of  pegs  in  a  corner  supports  sweaters,  slickers,  frayed  riding 

breeches  and  fisherman's  waders. 
There  is  a  typewriter  on  a  table  beside  papers,  newspapers,  magazines 

and  a  cribbage  board. 
There  are  trout  rods,  rifles,  quirts  on  the  walls,  and  webbed  snow 

shoes  for  winter. 

There  is  a  bay  horse  who  puts  his  white  nose  through  my  window 

each  morning  I  wake, 
And  a  black  and  white  dog  who  sleeps  on  the  foot  of  my  bed  every 

night,  and  shakes  hand  with  me. 
There  is  a  gray  squirrel  with  fringed  ears  that  cracks  nuts  on  my 

mantel  piece. 
And  a  boy  who  comes  and  plays  cribbage  with  me,  and  finds  worms 

for  my  fishing. 

All  these  are  good  in  their  way,  and  I  manage  to  live  with  them, 
Like  the  pines   on  the  mountains   that  march  to  the  sky,  and  the 

river  that  runs  to  the  ocean. 

But  they  all  point  to  something  above  and  beyond  and  inscrutable. 
They  have  taught  me  to  reach  out  and  take  hold  of  life,  and  to  tell 

of  her. 

They  have  taught  me  to  wake  in  the  moonlight  and  want  her, 
And  to  see  in  the  shadow  by  the  foot  of  my  bed  her  small  pair  of  shoes, 
And  a  little,  light  lacy  heap  on  a  chair,  like  a  cloud  half  asleep  in 

the  moonlight, 
And  a  little  gray  gauntlet  unmated  all  day  on  my  table  reaching  to  me. 

Sometimes  I  see  it  when  I  ride  laid  lightly  on  Gray  Leg's  shoulder. 
Sometimes  I  feel   those   little   brown  shoes   in  my  hands   when  we 

climb  the  high  trails. 
Sometimes  I  hear  a  voice  that  is  tuned  to  the  whisper  of  winds  and 

the  song  of  the  river. 
Sometimes  I  see  on  the  summits  a  face  that  the  flush  of  the  sunrise 

foretold. 

Sometimes  when  I  write  I  feel  two  finger  tips  sealing  my  eyelids, 
Or  someone  saying  "Who  am  I?  Where  am  I?"  with  the  ghost  of  a 

kiss  when  the  fire  dies, 
Or  a  warm  little  hand  half  awake  that  reaches  for  mine  when  I  wake 

from  dim  dreams  in  the  midnight. 
But  I  think  she  comes  closest  of  all  when  her  profile  is  sculptured 

in  shadow, 
And  her  feet  falter  closer  to  our  cabin  while  we  count  the  first  stars 

in  the  skies. 

Santa  Fe  11        15        18 


67 


THE  SANTA  FE  TRAIL 

The  high  plains  were  a  stage  for  it,  the  rolling  prairies  gave  its  tempo. 

The  mountains  were  its  climax,  the  desert  its  insistence, 

On  this  trail  that  tied  together  the  tie  rihs  of  a  nation, 

This  new  wild  folk  migration  that  went  traveling  with  the  sun. 

By  salt  buffalo  wallows,  beside  slow  running  rivers, 
Past  mountain  passes  threaded  by  big  horns  and  wild  stallions, 
Over  mesas  gray  with  grease-wood,  by  foot  hills  cactus  spined, 
Where  snow  that  flecked  the  desert  left  blind  stains  from  day  to  day: 

Across  the  great  arena  between  Missouri  and  the  Rockies, 

Past  black  stains  of  death's  dark  foot  prints  across  the  dreary  plains, 

Where  they  burned  brave  men  and  women  in  the  ashes  of  wrecked 

wagons, 
And  Apaches  and  Kiowas,  Utes  and  Sioux  tore  off  their  scalps: 

Where  highwaymen  murdered  men  who  rode  in  low  ox-carts  and  raw 

new  Concord   coaches, 

Mexicans  killing  Gringos,  and  Gringos  scalping  Greasers  like  Indians, 
Where  they  buried  bags  of  silver  by  tall  trees  on  shallow  river  islands, 
And  came  back  to  find  them  sometimes;  where  they  marked  the  trail 

with  graves: 

Where  the  red  men  tombed  their  war  chiefs  on  lofty  sapling  scaf 
foldings, 

Wrapped  in  furs  they  stripped  from  women  waiting  underneath  in 
winter  to  follow  them, 

Where  trappers  piled  up  stones  upon  their  silent  partners  lest  the 
wolves  should  paw  them  out, 

Where  blizzard-whitened  mounds  grew  flat  as  sodded  graves  grow 
flat  more  slowly: 

Where  the  pack  trains  bore  charred  corpses  on  their  sweating  mules 

and  horses, 
And  Comanches  with  trained  bell  mares  yelled,  and  shot  stampeding 

them  at  night, 
Where  ox-trains  plodded  steadily,  and  babes  were  born  in  canvas  tilts 

to  fill  their  thinning  ranks, 
And  men  made  love  to  women  like  lovers  on  sinking  ships: 


68 


Where  the  buffalo  ran  in  rivers  on  their  northward  spring  migration, 

Black  rivers  splitting  past  still  wagons  like  rocks,  wild  rivers  stam 
peding,  black  rapids  overwhelming  them; 

Where  red  rivers  of  prairie  fires  swept  past  the  trail  and  wiped  it 
out, 

Till  men  trod  out  the  ashes  in  the  ruts  that  time  had  worn: 

Where  their  escorts  trotted  in  ragged  ranks  to  the  New  Mexico  bor 
der  line, 

Bearded  dragoons  in  dull  blue  coats  and  dusty  caps,  and  Mexican 
lancers  in  steeple  hats  and  silver  tricked  trappings, 

Where  red-shirted  miners,  and  raw  Forty-Niners  in  newly  beaded 
buckskins,  sang  and  shouted,  betted  and  doubted  death  and  tall 
stories, 

And  gamblers  like  black  priests  of  chance  tried  out  their  eyes  and 
hands: 

Where  fat  French  and  Spanish  priests  and  rawboned  Moravian  mis 
sionaries 

Met  and  scowled  or  smiled  at  wayside  weddings  and  christenings, 

Where  lean  New  England  spinsters  stared  at  Mormon  and  Indian 
women  and  fat  Latin  prostitutes, 

And  at  last  struck  hands  together  by  some  death-bed,  squaw  and  maid : 

The  high  plains  were  a  stage  for  it,  the   rolling  prairies   swept  it 

westward, 
Past  the  mountains,  past  the  desert,  past  all  suffering  and  dying  to  the 

fruit  trees  of  Tesuque  and  the  sunset, 
Where  the  buffalo  ran,  and  the  Indian  rode,  and  the  Lancers  spurred, 

and  the  trappers  tramped;  and  the  world  rolls  after  them, 
In  a  new  steel  folk  migration  just  begun  where  theirs  is  done. 

Santa  F£  12        4        18 


69 
THE  OLD  DIM  TRAIL 

The  old,  dim  trail  is  gray  and  faint  as  a  memory  of  many  years  ago. 

It  sags  down  past  the  foot  hills  like  a  sick  snake  in  autumn. 

It  crawls  through  a  shallow  valley  of  bones  that  are  bleached  and 

lusterless. 

It  sidles  into  a  bone-dry  arroyo  and  wearily  heaves  itself  out  of  it. 
It  inches  past  rock  ledges  bare  and  brown  as  the  ribs  of  earth's  rotting 

carcass. 
It  is  a  fading  trace  of  the  past  and  of  feet  that  have  no  power  now 

to  warm  or  wear  it. 

It  creeps  to  the  loma's  edge  and  laps  over  it. 

It  falls  into  great  new  gullies  that  gash  and  distort  it. 

Pitching  past  them,  it  persists  through  a  shallow  wash  full  of  wagon 

tracks. 
Passing  fence  posts  and  telephone  posts  where  men  staked  out  two 

rods  of  it  for  a  wagon  road. 

It  goes  on  beside  a  footpath  by  a  fence  at  the  side  of  a  field, 
A  field  built  up  in  shallow  terraces  with  a  gray  ditch  high  and  dry 

at  the  top  of  it. 

It  points  to  Santa  Fe  that  lies  below  it, 

A  city  old  and  gray  in  the  gray  dust  of  November  under  November 

skies, 
With  the  crumbling  gray  adobes  in  the  foreground  with  their  fruit 

trees, 

With  its  gray  roofs  in  the  hollow  of  its  little  hidden  river, 
With  one  great  gray  dome  that  rises  higher  than  the  spires  of  tall 

poplar  trees  surrounding  it, 
And  the  slow  gray  spirals  floating  light  against  the  sullen,  high,  gray, 

northern  ridge  that  dominates  the  whole  of  it. 

It  lies  there,  nestling  in  the  great  gray  hollow, 

Like  a  city  long  asleep  and  barely  breathing, 

A  city  of  gray  ghosts  of  traders,  trappers  and  trailsmen, 

Horsemen  and  hunters,  soldiers  and  captains, 

Padres  with  their  burros,  bishops  and  governors, 

Mothers  and  their  children,  cowboys,  scouts  and  Indians, 

Husbandmen  with  burdens,  and  the  flocks  they  drove  before  them, 

Down  this  old  trail  that  died  here  like  last  year's  water  in  dry  and 

dusty  ditches, 
To  be  one  raveled  fringe  of  a  dream  of  a  city  forgotten. 

Others  may  delve  in  the  past  and  dusty  pages  and  parchments  in  the 

Old  Palace  library, 

To  track  life  down  to  the  death  and  old  trails  to  extinction, 
Like  rivers  that  sink  in  the  sea  and  the  dead  in  the  midnight. 
I  and  another  I  know  will  follow  backward  and  steadily  upward. 
For  every  trail  leads  two  ways;  past  the  fence  posts  and  ditches, 
Past  the  arroyos  like  wounds,  and  the  ledges  and  bare  ribs  of  earth 

and  animals, 
Past  green  pinyons  like  plumes  of  the  great  folded  wings  of  the  foot 

hills, 
To  the  tall  mountains'  gray  brows,  and  the  dazzling  white  veils  of  the 

snow  peaks. 
Up  to  a  past  that  is  older  than  all  earth's  dreams  and  her  cities, 

and  new  as  sunrise  this  morning, 
Up  to  a  sunlight  unshadowed  by  dust;  that  first  trails  start  for. 

Santa  F§  11        13        18 


70 


THE  RE  VENA  NT 

I  sit  in  the  New  Museum  Patio, 

At  a  long  brown,  bare  writing  table,  in  Santa  Fe. 

And  the  cool  gray  walls  are  good  to  me,  and  the  gray  shadows 

Of  the  vigas  round  the  courtyard  shift  and  lengthen, 

Like  the  dark  green  shadows  on  the  green  grass  plot  in  the  center. 

The  round,  brown  pine  tree  pillars  of  the  cloister  stand  up  sturdily. 
They  have  found  peace  at  last  in  a  place  of  long  and  ceaseless  silences. 
That  only  the  tireless  ticking  of  a  typewriter  or  the  foot-fall  of  a 

careless  tourist  distracts  or  distrubs. 
It  is  a  place  of  peace  and  cool  repose  for  people  worn  threadbare  by 

the  world's  vast  restlessness 
With  its  open  hatchway  to  Heaven  and  the  sunlight  that  smiles  on 

them. 

I  have  sailed  on  many  ships  and  shall  sail  again 

On  blue  days  and  on  still  days,  with  their  hidden  engines  throbbing 
steadily. 

But  here  in  mid  land  high  on  the  roof  of  Mountain  America, 

Ships  and  the  makers  and  movers  of  ships  are  as  far  from  me  and  as 
unfit  for  me 

As  they  were  for  the  brown  Franciscans  who  planted  the  brown  pine 
tree  crosses  here  three  hundred  years  ago. 

But  they  planted  the  masts  and  yards  of  ships  wherever  they  set 
them  up; 

Brown  symbols  of  a  world  that  sails  a  sea  unfathomed  and  shoreless; 

A  sea  of  space  and  of  terror  and  time,  death  and  midnight  and  mys 
tery. 

For  this  world  is  a  world  of  sailors  who  stand  on  earth  and  water 

ridges, 
And  who  watch  the  sky  and  the  winds  and  the  clouds  perforce  or  die 

in  the  din  of  machines. 
So  much  the  West  has  taught  me;   and  yesterday  when  I  took  the 

train  at  Lamy 
B'or  the  last  time  in  a  year  or  two,  perhaps,  I  loved  this  mountain 

land  of  ours 
More  than  ever  before,  it  seemed,  with  its  storm  that  swept  down 

on  us; 


71 


Drowning  far  blue  mountain  vistas,  and  the  yuccas  budded  and  bloom 
ing-  by  the  fringes  of  raw,  red  arroyos; 

And  its  high  clear  nearness  to  the  sky  and  to  space  that  we  sail  m 
forever  and  forever. 

I  must  go  East  again  to  the  cities  and  seaports  of  all  tall  mountain 

voyaging, 
Cities   that  are   sirens   painted   and   purblind,   and   homes   of  marred 

mothers  and  masters  of  men. 
I  shall  go  East  to  be  lost  for  a  time  in  the  dazzle  of  the  arc-lights  and 

the  coils  of  tortured  subways. 
As  a  diver  toils  through  a  sea  wall  of  surf  with  strange  stars  in  his 

eyes,  and  his  heart  and  lungs  tense  with  laboring, 
I  shall  come  out  again  in  a  wide  world  of  air  in  the  far-flung  furrows 

of  high  snow-crested  ranges, 
There  on  the  sinuous  crest  of  the  world,  in  the  sun  that  is  life  to 

all  living. 

Here   in   this   hatchway   of   time   with   the   blue   sky   brooding  white 

clouds  above  me 
And   the   green   earth   growing  white   hollyhocks   that   bloom   in   the 

corners  of  our  courtyard: 
As  a  sailor  sits  cross-legged  in  a  calm,  dreaming  a  little  as  he  stitches 

sails  for  tomorrow's  adventuring; 
I  set  my  stitches  of  ink  on  white  sails  of  paper  for  me  or  another; 

and  I  know 

I  shall  come  back  again  whatever  may  meet  me  tomorrow 
To  this  West  that  I  love  best  of  all  in  the  still,  deep,  hidden,  human 

heart  of  me. 
For  when  I  die  the  winds  of  the  sky  shall  bring  back  here  what  is 

left  of  me. 

Santa    Fe  7        1        19 


72 


TREASURE  SEEKERS 

Near  their  studio  two  friends  of  ours  found  scattered  potsherds. 
They  started  to  look  for  lost  foundations  on  the  loma  slope  in  April 

light. 
We  traced  the  stone  oblong  of  a  house  that  looked  at  sunrise  as  we 

looked  at  it. 
Tomorrow  I  may  go  there  and  dig  beside  them,  near  the  corner  or  the 

crossing  of  two  walls. 

We  may  find  treasure  of  turquoise,  or  obsidian,  spear  heads  and  arrow 

heads, 

Perfect  burial  bowls,  or  a  bone  flute  that  lay  mute  five  hundred  years, 
Yucca  fibre  wet  with  sweat,  blood  or  tears  that  dried  to  dust. 
We  must  make  haste  with  our  digging,  while  the  dream  of  it  all  is 

stuff  of  spring. 

We  who  try  to  paint  and  write  today,  may  bring  to  our  dead  brothers 
Something  that  is  good  for  their  ghosts,  though  we  never  find  an  idol 

at  all; 
Never  disinter  one  skeleton;  there  is  treasure  on  our  loma  when  we 

try  for  it, 
Stooping  in  the  shadow  of  lost  walls  to  make  a  memory,  of  a  house  of 

life  that  stood  here  four  square  to  sun  and  storm. 

Santa  Fe  4        3        21 


73 


PUPPETS  AND  PEOPLE 

We  had  a  community  theatre  here  two  years  ago. 
Something  happened,  or  failed  to  happen,  and  it  disappeared. 
Now  we  have  a  new  little  Art  Theatre,  intimately  narrowing, 
Fairly  efficient — as  the  French  say,  the  good  ever  fights  with  the  best. 

Clever  comedies  cleverly  staged  are  all  very  well  in  their  way. 
Once  every  month  or  two  is  too  long  to  wait  for  all  we  must  go  without. 
Someday  this  community  thing  will  come  back  to  stay  in  our  hearts; 

we'll  wonder  at 
Miracle  plays  and  other  plays  of  many  clans  in  our  tribe,  and  Greek 

and  Spanish  dances  done  as  San  Domingo  does. 

V.  D.  says  that  nowadays  she'd  rather  see  a  first  magnitude  track 
meet, 

Or  a  big  base  ball  game,  breaking  hard  in  the  ninth,  than  most  of  their 
minor  puppet  shows. 

V.  D.  would  rather  be  than  act;  being  what  she  is,  I'm  not  blaming  her. 

There  are  times  when  I  prefer  tennis  to  oratorios,  and  hiking  to  Ber 
nard  Shaw. 

"Acting,  like  dancing,  has  its  use,"  says  V.  D.;   "So  has  war  when 

you're  keyed  up  to  it. 
There  are  mobs  that  we  hate — but  we  want  to  live  in  a  crowd,  now 

and  then,  going  strong; 
Something  more  modern  than  Greece  and  minuets,  something  as  bfg 

and  heart  stirring  as  those  mountain  tops. 
Tragedy  poises  there,  the  high  plains  sustain  then — Whitman's  men 

and  women,  to  match  all  out  of  doors." 

Santa  Fe  5        7        21 


74 


PUSSY  CATS  AND  CHERUBIM 

There  are  certain  rooms  upstairs  in  our  museum  of  art  that  belong 

More  to  an  artist  dead  and  little  known  than  to  anyone  alive. 

People  see  the  pictures,  but  sunrise  and  moonlight  see  more  than 
Beauregard's  beauty  slowly  spelled 

Through  the  long  gallery  and  the  two  ante  rooms  and  the  corner  room 
resplendent 

With  its  hand  carved  and  color  patterned  great  vigas  and  pine  fur 
niture,  and  the  tall  copper  tea  urn  whose  shadow  slowly  shifts. 

"We  ought  to  use  this  room  more,"  said  Vera  Deane,  one  day  when 
we  looked  in  after  lunch. 

"In  spite  of  their  hand  picked  lady  profiteer  patronesses  of  the  sort 
that  keeps  culture  to  itself. 

Once  in  a  while  Notabilities  arrive,  linger  in  the  state,  meet  our  Cap 
ital  City. 

A  Function  is  arranged;  then  they  throw  open  the  doors  of  their  toy 
house  of  littleness  to  some  of  us. 

Anyhow  they  haven't  locked  them  up  yet,  to  keep  trippers  from  Kansas 
and  Texas  in  their  places. 

Men  are  such  egotistic  brutes  with  their  treasure  houses  of  small  art 

strivings 
We  small  town  women  have  to  copy  them;   you  will  stage  your  big 

book  tea  elsewhere. 
Men   and   women   and   artists   forever  are   divided   into   sharers   and 

hoarders. 
It  takes  both  kinds  to  go  on  with;   the  little  ones  play  safe  when 

they  can. 
It  takes  a  big  person  to  get  life  across  from  a  studio  or  a  tea  urn  and 

stay  with  it. 

Little  folks  get  together  in  cliques  and  clubs;  they  graft  on  Institu 
tions  men  have  never  yet  learned  to  use. 

You  have  a  community  center  of  a  sort,  and  a  Stranger's  Club  down 
stairs;  be  thankful  for  that. 

Hoarders  are  better  than  wasters — sometimes — though  they  put  their 
Impossible  Pussy  cats 

In  our  corner  Pueblo  fire  place  yonder,  and  elsewhere;  if  you  get 
what  I  mean. 

Life  wished  social  andirons  on  us  as  well  as  warmer  things;  I  like  the 
dumb  ones  better;  let's  go  and  take  a  ride." 


75 


Half  an  hour  later,  by  an  adobe  on  the  loma,  four  brown  dolls  of  the 
dirt 

Stared  at  us  speechless  till  V.  D.  startled  in  them  symptoms  of  cher 
ubim  starting  chuckling. 

That  night  she  sighed  and  told  me  "They  never  known  how  much  they 
miss, 

Those  club  women  and  culture  hoarders,  who  have  one  or  two,  or  node 
at  all. 

I'd  rather  share  my  life  with  my  man  and  my  last  bora's  brothers  and 
sisters'  broken  playthings. 

Toy  houses  are  for  fun,  my  dear,  each  empty  one  like  empty  eyes 
means  tragedy — play  Mousorgsky." 

Santa  F6  5        6        21 


76 


SUNSET -NEW  MEXICO 

On  the  loma  shoulder  by  the  gray  adobe, 

Two  horses  stand  by  a  well  head  high  on  the  sky  line. 

The  first  snow  lingers  still  in  a  lonely  hollow, 

Like  a  handkerchief  dropped  by  a  dancer  as  she  hurries. 

Scraps  of  it  hide  in  the  creases  and  cracks  of  the  foot  hills. 

They  are  crumpled  heaps  of  clothes  that  slid  past  the  knees  of  the 

mountains 

A  hundred  thousand  thousand  years  ago,  when  they  began 
To  make  them  ready  for  music  whiter  than  moonlight  at  midnight. 

Twilight  is  their  tire  woman,  eternally  patient. 

The  shadows  are  her  dusky  slaves  that  slip  on  tiptoe 

Into  hidden  closets  behind  the  clouds'  low  curtains, 

Into  distant  corners  of  far  gardens  in  high  ranges'  treasure  cities, 

Bringing  the   elements   of  bueaty  out  of  dimness   for  her  high  and 

nightly  ritual. 

The  sunset  flames  and  glows  and  tremoles, 
Like  an  island  of  opals  disintegrating  and  flooding 
Blue  lakes  with  scarlet  flakes,  and  bare  gray  beaches  with  reaches 

of  mirrored  amber. 
And  the  sky  changes  as  a  woman's  gray  eyes  brighten  in  a  round  and 

silver  banded  mirror, 
When  her  face  is  flushing  softly  in  the  light  of  her  own  loveliness. 

Heaven  has  lit  her  footlights, 

And  lifted  up  her  great  drop  curtain  ever  so  little. 

And  here  on  the  edge  of  her  radiance, 

Where  the  dancers'  feet  begin  to  beat  ever  so  little  to  new  pulses 

stirring  them, 

The  trailing  borders  of  their  robes  appear; 
Ultramarine  and  crimson,  pale  green,  pearl  gray  and  lilac; 
Purple  deeper  than  twilight's  own  deep  hem  as  she  lets  fall, 
All  the  flowers  that  flame  and  dicker  on  far  mesas  for  the  mazes  of 

her  dance. 

All  the  fruits  of  all  the  plantations  of  earth  are  glowing  together  there ; 
Airy  orbs  and  ardent  apples  for  dream  orchards  and  vineyards,  and 

red  and  blue  berries  bright  with  dew. 
And  they  tread  them  under  their  feet  in  the  harvest  vat  of  the  dusk, 

and  slowly  distil 
The  cool,  dark  wine  of  the  night  that  she  lifts  to  the  lips  of  her 

dancers. 


77 


Twilight  swings  strings  of  jewels  that  iall  and  flash  before  their  wait 
ing  feet; 

Rubies,  beryls,  spinels;  topaz,  jaspar  and  turquoise; 
Sapphires,  pearls,  opals,  emeralds;  sardonyx  and  amethyst; 
And  dull  gray  agates  at  last,  like  pebbles  for  the  feet  of  the  dancers. 

But  the  feet  of  the  dancers  cannot  feel  either  pebbles  or  apples. 
Their  feet  are  of  air,  their  bodies  are  air,  their  breasts  are  air,  and 

their  lips  that  whisper  it. 
Their  faces  are  phantoms  of  light  and  beauty  beyond  all  beauty  men 

image  or  mirror. 
Dreams  of  the  Lord  of  all  Light  who  made  His  mountains  old  women 

who  wait  for  His  singers  and  dancers; 
With  their  heads  in  the  night  where  the  stars  are  coronets  and  tall 

tiaras  and  high  halos, 
Rounding  their  brows  and  their  throats  like  falling  notes  of  the  song 

all  space  is  ringing  with  at  sunset 
ATiere  high  on  the  loma's  shoulder  beside  their  horses  by  the  well 

head, 
A  woman  and  a  girl  are  standing;  looking  and  longing,  and  listening. 

Santa  F6  10        31        18 


78 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TENNIS  COURT 

A  girl  with  a  racket  sweeping  high,  smashing  to  the  back  line — 

An  arc  like  a  crescent  moon  inverted — Diana — Valkyrie, 

Swinging  speed   and   stark  will   to   the   mark  wth   the   weight  of   a 

war  hammar — 
Etched  against  a  skyline  of  glowing  snow  peaks  and  sunset  light. 

Day  grows  grayer  as  she  drives  duller  balls  to  dimmer  corners. 
There  is  a  Woman  of  the  Worlds  somewhere  who  serves  spinning 

planets  and  plunging  meteors  so; 

Shifting  speed  and  matter  through  surer  meshes  that  move  tomorrow, 
To  make  the  mothers  of  a  nation  of  men  fit  to  fight  forever  failing 

light. 

Santa  Fe  5        8        21 


79 


ENVOY 

I  have  come  back  again  to  this  mountain  land  I  always  love, 

After  many  joumeyings,  farther  east  and  west. 

I  have  seen  two  oceans,  and  tall  cities  I  am  tiring  of. 

And  the  ranges  spell  long  purpose  through  blue  beauty's  dome  of  rest. 

The  ranges  of  lost  wonderlands  men  loved  and  longed  for  yesterday, 
Where  their  ghosts  go  slowly  through  the  dust  of  dim   and  distant 

trails ; 
And  the  little  winds  of  morning  rise,  and  dead  hearts  stir  and  start 

away. 
And  the  singing  skyline  changes  till  the  twilight  dulls  r.nd  fails. 

Here  is  freedom  from  perdition,  in  the  jangled  wills  of  driven  men, 
And  sick  souls  of  wasted  women,  in  her  high,  clear  amber  light; 
And  a  timeless  gray  tradition  that  old  bells  twice  blessed  intone  again, 
When  the  twilight  like  God's   kiss  comes  down  to  wish  this  world 
good  night. 

Here  is  solace  in  sunrises,  when  her  eastern  stubborn  wall  of  stone 
Seems  to  lift  to  airy  altar  lights;   past  timber  line  and  snow 
The  shadows  some  caressing  earth;  and  here  a  man  may  lie  alone 
With  the  eye  of  heaven  that  warms  today,  and  what  the  wind  may 
know. 

There  is  sound  of  running  water  where  her  hidden  rivers  glide, 
There  are  pine  trees  talking  to  red  rocks,  and  to  any  human  ear 
That  can  spell  one  least  still  letter  of  truth  her  trembling  aspens  hide, 
And  forget  those  fevered  cities  while  her  secrets  whisper  here. 

Santa  Fe  554 


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' 


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